


What Doesn't Bend Will Break

by orphan_account



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, General Sanvers, Sanvers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-09-21 12:36:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 31,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9549245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Alex had an intense, closeted affair with Astra before her death.  She remained in denial for its entirety, and her drinking became more serious after her unfortunate choice to kill Astra in battle.  A year later, still plagued by nightmares, she’s otherwise moved on, and has come out to herself and her family.  She feels healthier and has fallen for Maggie.  Everything seems like it’s on the right path, until Astra returns from the dead and throws everything into chaos.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by the one-shot "One Year Sober" but it is not connected to it.

Alex gritted her teeth and welcomed the pain of being shoved against the wall, her head knocking back against the corrugated metal of the warehouse with repeated, dull thunks.  It  _ should _ hurt, she thought, because she shouldn’t be doing this in the first place.  Maybe the little lumps on the back of her head tomorrow would help her remember that.

Astra’s breathing shouldn’t be hissing in her ear, Astra’s fingers shouldn’t be inside her, fucking her so hard that she was being banged around like a ragdoll.  She was clutching at Astra’s hair, gripping handfuls of it, that damn white streak knotted around one of her fists. 

“I’ll stop if you want,” Astra rasped.

Alex didn’t want her to stop.  Astra knew that perfectly well.  How was this happening again?  It was supposed to be a secret meeting, an effort to establish a detente through back channels.  But instead, it was… this.  Again.  Alex swore to herself that she wasn’t even into women.  This was, she told herself, even as it was happening, just some kind of aberration.  She’d go home and nurse her injuries (because there were always minor injuries), and then drink a lot to forget it.   It took about a week or two.  She would end up going to work drunk during that time, because it was the only way to keep her thoughts sufficiently muddled that J’onn wouldn’t know what was happening, so that if he caught any flashes of it in her memories, he could chalk them up to fantasy or something else.   


Alex knew Kara worried every time she’d turn up with weird bruises.  Alex never gave her a real answer, how could she?  There was everything wrong about it.  She’d say it was a rough sparring session with Vasquez and wave off any more questions. She felt guilty for these secrets, these lies, but she felt worse about what she was doing in the first place.  She couldn’t explain it.   


And so, her body shuddered upwards into a white-hot orgasm, pressed up against the wall, her black trousers pushed down to mid-thigh, holster dangling uselessly next to her leg.  She came, her ass pressed up against cold, gritty metal and Astra’s fingers in her, pinned there by the gravitational field that was Astra’s body.   _ How can her body feel like iron and clouds at the same time? _

“Human,” Astra panted over her shoulder after a few moments of silence filled with their slowing breaths.  Alex didn’t answer.   


“Astra,” Alex sighed with gruff weariness, even as she silently lamented the feeling of Astra’s fingers pulling out of her, “we can’t do this again.”

Astra stepped back and surveyed Alex yanking her trousers up over her hips.  “Why?” she inquired, and Alex swore there was some genuine hurt beneath her cool. 

Alex shook her head.  “Look, I don’t know why this keeps happening, but it has to stop.  It’s just going to… confuse things.”

Astra frowned.  “You are ashamed of me.”

Alex fastened her belt.  “I’m ashamed of myself!” she snapped.   


“Why?  Because we are on opposite sides of this war?”

Alex’s jaw flexed for a few moments.  “For starters,” she answered.

“Is this not a path to peace?”

Alex shook her head.  “It’s not like I can go back to my superiors and explain that this was my negotiating tactic.  And frankly, it’s not like you can tell Non either.”

Astra stroked her cheek the way she had done the first time they fought.  It had struck Alex as so strange, even then, that this warrior who had just moved to kill her would then touch her with such gentleness, with a look of such appreciation.   _ So brave, for one of your kind, _ she’d commented, as if she were admiring some rare flora or fauna.  That touch, that strange look, had stirred something in Alex’s belly, even under those circumstances, but she’d ignored it.  But then Astra had started coming to her in secret, and those stirrings grew stronger.   


“Human,” she sighed again. 

Alex brushed her hand away.  “Look, is this normal for you?”

Astra tilted her head curiously.  “Is what normal for me?”

“This!” Alex exclaimed in frustration.  “Sex… with… with women!  With… with enemy soldiers!  Any of this!”  She wiped her palms against her thighs.

Astra smiled strangely.  “It is… a show of respect,” she said at last, seeming to choose her words carefully.  “The warrior spirit is much entwined with the darker desires of the flesh.”

“You mean sex.”

Astra nodded.  “Is it not the same for your people?”

Alex shrugged.  She didn’t want to think about it.  She didn’t want to think about the recognition she felt when she struggled in Astra’s arms, burying her tongue in Astra’s mouth, biting her lips so hard she’d draw blood in a human.  She didn’t want to think about how, beneath the guilt and confusion and self-loathing, it felt so familiar, so  _ good _ .  She understood Astra, in ways that were hard to explain to anyone else outside of her own head.  Her fierceness, her principled intransigence, on some gut level, made sense to Alex.  “It doesn’t matter,” she said hoarsely.  “You’re the enemy.  You’re Kara’s aunt.  It’s wrong.  All of it.  I’m going to have to fight you at some point.  I may have to try to kill you.  Doesn’t that… bother you?”

Astra shook her head.  “Our meeting on the battlefield, if it comes to pass, will be glorious.  I would be pleased to die at the hand of one so brave as you.”  Her eyes cast down, then.  “But I suppose that I would feel some grief if our fortunes were reversed and I were forced to take your life and send you to your gods.”

“I don’t have any gods,” Alex huffed.

Astra considered this for a moment.  “That is a shame,” she decided, and said nothing more of it.

“There has to be another way,” Alex grumbled. 

“But,” Astra protested, “I desire you.  You seem to feel this as well, do you not?”   


“No!” Alex shouted.  She zipped her leather jacket and glanced around the darkened warehouse.  “No, I don’t!  It’s just... this weird thing that keeps happening.”  She pulled away from Astra and began taking long strides toward her bike, which was parked over by the large double doors.    


The hurt look in Astra’s eyes when she said this stuck in Alex’s chest, tugging in uncomfortable ways.  The part of Alex that knew it was a lie was quick to tell her so.  She wanted Astra, she wanted what was happening between them, but she knew she had to let it go.  It wasn’t meant, she told herself.  It was crazy.  It was the literal definition of star-crossed.   _ And you don’t even like women, _ she added to herself.

She looked at Astra’s face, her strong, beautiful, wounded face, and bit down for a moment.  “I’m… I’m sorry….”

“Go,” Astra answered, bitterness coloring her tone.  “We will face each other in combat soon enough, and then one way or another, this will no longer be a problem for you.”

Alex mounted her bike and rode away, ignoring the tears that slid in hot tracks down her cheeks.

  
  


****

 

As it turned out, Astra was right, at least partly. 

They did meet on the battlefield.  How glorious it was, well… that was open for debate.  They struggled hand-to-hand, the two of them, and it was not so different from when they’d fucked in all those dark, deserted places.  Alex wrestled her like Jacob wrestling his angel and at the end, she’d pleaded with Astra to desert the cause.  Promised her that her own gods would not look ill at such a choice.  Begged her to come over, into the light.  She could see in Astra’s face that she was torn, her heart was no longer in the fight, that her honor and loyalty were fighting a losing battle against her heart’s desire to be reunited with her niece, and fight beside Alex as a comrade and a lover.

Alex might have succeeded if they’d had another moment to wrestle one another, to hold and grapple against one another.  But in the end, they were torn apart, and Alex, as she’d feared, was faced with the choice of losing her friend, surrogate father, and commanding officer, or Astra.  Strange, sad, strong Astra.  The choice between duty and… and whatever that was… was no kind of choice at all.  Alex ran a kryptonite sword through Astra’s heart but she knew enough to know that that heart had been broken long before Alex ever got to her.

The moments Alex spent crouched beside her on the asphalt of the rooftop burned in her memory.  The minutes that she watched the life ebb from her, the grief and regret that tore at her, the way Astra’s lip trembled and her wide eyes stared at Alex and her voice, paper thin, rasped, “I am glad that it was you, Alexandra.”

Those words seared into her skin, burrowed into her nightmares.  The guilt wrecked her until she had no choice but to admit to Kara that it was she and not J’onn who had taken Astra down.  Even then, Alex didn’t tell Kara everything.  How could she?   


And so, she drank.  At first she drank to numb herself of the guilt; the guilt of what she’d been having with Astra before the battle, the guilt of having taken her life instead of bringing her to the side of righteousness.  And her lies, her lies, the layers upon layers of lies that she wrapped herself in.  She drank to ease the weight of it.  It would take more than a week or two of heavy drinking to wipe this one out of her mind.  She drank until she forgot why she drank, she just knew she needed to or she would be crushed by a whole lot of things she didn’t want to think about.

Alex stopped wondering why she couldn’t meet anyone or make a relationship work, ever.  But she was so lonely that when the world nearly ended, she let Maxwell Lord hold her hand, because it was still better than dying alone.  And she worked, and she worked, and she worked, and she drank.   


Only J’onn noticed how bad it actually was.  She was sharp enough that she was still smarter and stronger than most agents were when sober, but J’onn still knew.  He confronted her at one point, and she promised him she’d cut back, and she did, in a way.  She stopped showing up to work under the influence.   She instead just compressed all of her drinking into her nights, drank until she blacked out, and somehow managed to find herself standing under the pounding shower the next morning, on time and on track to get to work.

And if she sometimes dreamed of Astra, or cried her name out in her sleep, either in grief or in pleasure, well, she wouldn’t know it.  She was in too deep a stupor to ever tell.


	2. Chapter 2

Maggie liked National City.  She liked police work.  She liked aliens.  In a way, she kind of related to them; having grown up queer and decidedly not white in Nebraska pretty much made her feel like she was from outer space.  In her small town, she was literally the only lesbian some of her friends had ever met.  Ever.  It got old.  So the big town full of big talk and people of all different races and shades and variants of genders (the M’akru had something like 27 genders if you were being conservative) felt a lot like coming home.  She’d found other queer chicks and alien girls who didn’t mind a little cross-species hanky-panky and she’d found a community of weirdos to call her own and she didn’t miss the corn fields.  Not one bit.

But then there was Alex.  Alex had grown up around here, and had an alien for a sister, and was tough and smart and spoke a couple of languages and knew you weren't supposed to put the wasabi into the soy sauce when you ate sushi.  But Alex had only just figured out she was gay, at the age of thirty, and it was, for Maggie, like reliving the best parts of her own coming out experience all over again.  It was shiny and new and Alex was, if not innocent, an embodiment of anything Maggie might consider ever being nostalgic about from her teen years in the land of big ag, high school football and whip-its in the parking lot of the local flea market. 

Alex was excited about her.  Legitimately bubbling over, excited.  Head over heels thrilled to be in her arms.  Maggie couldn’t remember the last girl who had acted that way without digging up memories of her first girlfriend in eleventh grade.  Maggie was a little exhausted by how frequently Alex wanted to fuck, but then she remembered how she’d been at first too, and surrendered to the flow.  It wasn’t going to be like that forever, if lesbians were lesbians, and honestly it was fun.  Whatever Alex lacked in skill and experience she more than made up for in enthusiasm, and frankly, she was a quick study. 

Not that there weren’t red flags.  There always were.  In Alex’s case, there were two:  the drinking, and the nightmares.  Maggie appreciated a girl who could hold her liquor, but it bothered her a little that Alex seemed to drink casually, all the time, even when she was home alone.  While it didn’t seem to slow her down much, Maggie wasn’t so sure that that in itself wasn’t a sign of a problem.  They’d only been together a short while, so for now she was just watching and waiting to see how things played out.  But it concerned her, because she was, despite herself and her walls and her whatnot, falling just as head over heels in love as Alex, and she didn’t want to be head over heels in love with a drunk.  She’d been to that rodeo before.  She’d left without any souvenirs.

But the nightmares almost bothered her more.  Alex was cagey about them and insisted that she didn’t remember having them, which may or may not have been true.

Finally, she had to press the point.  Alex was crying out in her sleep, the way she often did, and Maggie sat up in bed next to her.  She looked at Alex’s thrashing form for a moment.  “Astra!”  she was crying.  “Astra, no!”  That name again.

After a moment of hesitation, Maggie shook Alex gently.  “Hey,” she said softly.  “Hey, Danvers, wake up.”

Alex sat bolt upright in the bed, in mid-cry.  She looked around, eyes wild, for a moment seeming like she didn’t know where she was.  It was dark, but Maggie was pretty sure she saw tears.  She rubbed Alex’s back, stroking her for a moment while she got her bearings.  “You okay, Al?”

Alex’s breathing was slowing.  “Um, yeah…”

“Who’s Astra?”  Maggie asked.

Alex bristled.  “What?”

“You kept saying, Astra, no.”  She was careful to keep her tone soft and neutral, trying to draw the truth out of her.

Alex frowned, the little deep furrow appearing between her brows.  “Uh, it’s just… Maggie, I don’t want to…. It’s … it’s nothing.”

Maggie shook her head.  “Uh-uh, Danvers.  You’ve been having nightmares about this as long as I’ve been sharing your bed.  If I have to wake up all the time for you, you can at least tell me what it’s about.”

Alex shifted uncomfortably.  “Maggie, this is a really long story…”

Maggie gestured out the window to where the moon sat high in the sky, overlooking the twinkling city.  “I’ve got nowhere to be.”

“Painful story,”  Alex amended.  “Painful, is what I meant.”

“For me to listen to, or for you to tell?”  Maggie asked, half joking but half not.

“Both.”

Maggie put her arms around Alex for a moment, squeezed her and said, “Let’s lie down.  Tell me the whole thing.”

They settled in against the pillows, and Alex, her eyes still glassy, stared out the window, and began to speak. 

Maggie listened quietly as Alex explained that Kara had an aunt and uncle who had survived, who had turned up on earth.  That they had been imprisoned by Kara’s mother, a judge, for blowing up some government buildings to protest the activities that would eventually destroy Krypton.  She listened as Alex described how Astra had intended to save Earth from Krypton’s fate by taking it over, how the DEO had worked to thwart those efforts.  She noticed what sounded like admiration in her voice when she described Astra’s honor, command prowess and strength, sadness when she offhandedly mentioned that Astra seemed lonely in her marriage, that she’d wanted badly to reunite with her niece, whom she had loved so dearly.  She couldn’t help wondering whether there was another level to this story.  Alex described a battle in which Astra and her husband attempted to execute their plan, and the DEO intervened.  Alex pleaded with Astra to abandon her cause, her husband, and switch sides.

“She … she was torn, I could see it, if I had just had another moment….”  Alex sniffled.  “But then J’onn swooped in and pulled us apart and they were fighting and I had to save him, because she was going to kill him … and…”  Alex paused for a long moment, swallowed several times trying to find the strength to say the words.  “...I killed her.  I didn’t have a choice.  But I didn’t want to…. Maggie, I didn’t want to kill her….”  She broke down, and Maggie put her arms around Alex and let her weep for a few minutes on her chest.

“I’m sure Kara forgives you,”  she soothed.  “Sometimes you can’t help the way things go.  And Astra chose her side, right?”

“Yes,” Alex sobbed.  “But I wanted her on my side!”

She cried for a few minutes more.  Maggie stroked her hair, and asked very softly, “Listen, Al, I’m going to ask you something, and I don’t want you to be mad at me, but … was there something between you and Kara’s aunt?”

The redoubled sobbing confirmed Maggie’s suspicions.  Maggie held her tighter.  Everything snapped into focus.  Maggie gave a low, impressed whistle. Poor closeted Alex, and the first girl who comes along and rings her bell so loud she can’t ignore it is her foster sister’s aunt who's trying to take over the world and who she’s eventually forced to kill.  Maggie had had bad luck with girls before Alex, but that probably had the best of her sob stories beat by a country mile.

“It was …”  Alex began after a few more minutes of crying heavily on Maggie.  “It was a weird thing… it was … she came to me in secret, it was supposed to be negotiations, but it was … Maggie, I hated myself so much…”  Maggie stroked her hair and let her release some more of her grief.  She wondered whether Alex had ever shared this with anyone before.

“How long did it go on?”

“Not that long.  It was only a few times … four, maybe five?”  Alex sniffled and breathed a few more times.  “I wanted her.  I hated myself for wanting her.  It was … I understood her, in a way.  She was strong, she was a fighter, she was fierce, she was honorable.  I didn’t understand what I was feeling and when she broke it down for me, I didn’t want to hear it.  And she was Kara’s aunt, one of only three living members of her blood family and among the last of her race.  And I killed her.”

“And that’s why you still have nightmares about it.  You’re tortured with guilt.”

“Yeah.  And regret.  She deserved better.  Kara deserved better.”

“ _You_ , Alex. You deserved better.”  Maggie ruffled Alex’s hair.  She’d wondered where exactly the darkness lay in Alex’s soul, and there it was.  “You deserved to admit to yourself who you were and what you wanted.  And I know… I know you think that maybe if you had, she’d still be alive now, but… it was war, Alex.  You don’t know.”   _Christ_ , Maggie thought.  She tried to imagine having the weight of someone’s death lingering over her coming-out.  All things considered, it was sort of amazing that Alex hadn’t been a bigger basket case about them getting together.

It explained a lot, though.  It explained the nightmares.  It explained the drinking.  Maggie figured Alex could probably use a shitload of therapy but she doubted there was a therapist in National City who was equipped to handle this.

“You’re not mad at me for not telling you sooner?”

Maggie shrugged.  “We all have our dark night of the soul.  That’s yours.”

“What’s yours?” Alex asked miserably.

“Uh-uh.  That’s for another night….Does Kara know all this?”

“She knows I killed her.  She doesn’t know about … the other thing.”

“She doesn’t know you were... involved.”

Alex shook her head.

Maggie held her tightly.  “I don’t know exactly how I help you get past this, but I’m glad I know.”  She kissed the top of Alex’s head, and promised her that it would be alright, that she was there for her, and that maybe someday, she’d give her the moon.

  


****

 

A week later Maggie’s phone rang while she was at work.  It was Alex, and when Maggie answered, she heard sobbing on the other end of the phone.  Her heart jumped into her mouth.  “Alex! Babe, are you alright?  What’s… what’s going on?”

A frantic, choked whisper.  “Maggie… Maggie, she’s… she’s here…”

“What?  Who?  Who’s there?”

“She’s here, Maggie, and she’s … I don’t know what to do…”

“Hey, hey, what’s… what’s going on?”

“Maggie, she’s not dead…”

Maggie froze.  No fucking way.  It couldn’t be.  “Al, are you talking about … about Astra?”

“I killed her, Maggie… I watched her die… but she’s not dead…. She’s here.”  Her voice was a desperate, panicked whisper.

Panic formed a knot in Maggie’s chest.  “Are you at the DEO?”

“No, I’m at the bar.”

Maggie winced.  Why was she at the bar in the middle of the afternoon?  “I’ll be right there.”

Maggie had no idea what she could possibly do, or what she was walking into, but she figured she'd prepare for the worst, and strapped up.


	3. Chapter 3

She had many gaps in her memories.  It was to be expected.  The aliens who had found her floating in space were far more advanced than the humans and their medicine rivaled even Krypton’s, but still, they couldn't repair everything.  Nevertheless, she had been given an impossible gift, the gift of life.  And if she had to pay with a few memories, then the price was the price.    


The oldest memories were wired in the hardest and returned with the least difficulty.  She lay on the med table for what seemed like days as the quiet, pale creatures moved softly around her, occasionally adjusting things on their computers, apparently slowly reassembling her mind and body.

She was aware of a fading scar in the middle of her chest.  She tried to speak to her caregivers but they seemed not to understand her, only pushing her gently back down onto the table and murmuring something foreign in reassuring tones.

She remembered Krypton’s red sunsets, it's sharp towers that needled the sky.  She remembered Non, her compatriot.  Her husband.  For some reason, the memory of his face filled her with melancholy.  She remembered her sister, her mirror, her twin.  And her niece.  Her beautiful, sweet Kara.

She remembered more than she wished she did about Fort Rozz, and what she endured to whip a band of criminals into an army.  People called her “General”.  She remembered that.  And then there was Earth.    


She remembered its blue oceans, it's pale yellow sun, it's rivers.  That yellow sun had given her extraordinary abilities.  She no longer felt that power coursing through her cells as she lay there.

And her joy at finding her niece again.  She remembered seeing her, grown into a woman, wearing the crest of her house.  What pride she felt.  How her heart broke that they could not fight on the same side.  She had had family once.  Why didn't she now?  It wasn’t coming back, not in whole pieces that fit perfectly.  She remembered imprisonment, torture.  Green lights.

Some of it would return to her over the coming days.  She had wanted to save them all, to keep Earth from meeting the same fate that Krypton had.  She remembered losing her resolve, but couldn’t remember why.

The end was blurry and full of gaps.  She recalled the world flickering into blackness and the stars extinguishing themselves.  She had heard sobbing;  Kara’s yes, but there was another voice.  She remembered something flooding her heart, gratitude for dying a warrior’s death, and something else.  Forgiveness?  She remembered wanting to say something, to reassure those who shed tears for her that she was content with her lot.

But that was all.  Much about the manner of her death was no longer available to her, perhaps because her gracious hosts were protecting her from the memory of it.  She supposed the healing wound in her chest was the cause of it.  Who had dealt it, she didn’t remember.  She didn’t remember being pierced.    


She remembered a soldier.  Someone she had fought.  Someone she had respected.  A creature who was brave and filled with fire, a spirit that had struck a chord of sympathy in her.  Ancient warrior customs gave her the right to share bodies with her once, a last moment of dwelling in the living soul and flesh of an opponent whom she admired before they faced each other in combat.  She was filled with apprehension as it came back to her that she had claimed her rights with that warrior once, before a battle.  But no, it was more than once.  She had claimed them again and again.  This was not the custom.

Her mind persisted in keeping the face of that warrior just out of grasp of her seeking consciousness, the memories of their encounters blurred of any specifics.  The blistering heat of desire, though, the way it had blazed like a star in her belly, lust returning to her body after such sensations had been lost to her for decades… that, she could still access.    


After she slept and woke and slept again a few more times, she woke to one of her hosts bending over her, a beatific smile on its narrow face.  Finally, it spoke a tongue she understood.  “General,” it addressed her.

Astra appreciated the politeness.  “Not anymore.  I’m only Astra now.”

It tilted its head to one side, and the translucent skin around its large blue eyes crinkled.  “As you wish.”  It paused for a moment.  “How are you feeling?”

“Better.  Thank you.”

It began to move aside various apparatus to free her from the bed.  “We see that you are Kryptonian, but of course, there is no Krypton for you to return to.”  She nodded an acknowledgement, and it continued.  “We see in your memories that you spent quite some time on Earth.  Would you like to be returned there?”

Astra didn’t know what to say.  “Yes,” she sighed.  She didn’t know what would be awaiting her, but she had nowhere else to go and no ties to any other place that she wanted to remember.

  
  


***************

  
  


She was deposited in National City, along the shoreline.  It took very little time for the yellow sun to begin filling her with the thrumming current of power that she remembered.  She stared at the sparkling water.  The blue sky.  The gulls wheeling overhead.  _  Birds, _ she thought.  _  We didn’t have those on Krypton.  Such strange, graceful things.   _ It came to her that she could do that too, go aloft and wheel about and soar at incredible speeds.  It did not seem wise to do so just now, though.  One thing she remembered about Earth was that most humans were bound to its surface, as she had once been to the surface of Krypton.

She moved through the city on foot, slowly, trying to remember things about this place.  Kara was supposed to be here, somewhere.  Her husband, maybe, would be here.  Again, the thought of him filled her with sadness that she could not explain.  And the warrior, the soldier woman with whom she had … she lacked the words to define what had been between them.  In any case, she would be here, too, she supposed.

She saw a man in a dark uniform standing on the corner of a street.  He had a sidearm and a club at his waist.  People in uniform were usually a good place to start.  She walked up to him.  “Sir,” she addressed him.

He looked at her a little strangely, his eyes flicking over her clothing.  It occurred to her she might need to find something to wear that would blend in a bit better.  “What can I do for you?”    


“Where are the aliens?”

He rolled his eyes.  “Great,” he muttered, “it’s gonna be one of  _ those _ days.”

She changed tactic.  “What I mean to say is, the ones who are like...”  She scrounged for the name…  What did Kara call herself on this world?  “Supergirl,” she said.  “Ones like Supergirl.  Where would I find them?”

He sighed.  “Look, I don’t know where Supergirl hangs out in National City.  But, uh… I dunno, I heard about this alien bar downtown… hang on…”  He pulled out a small radio from his belt and muttered into it.  “Yeah, any of you guys know the address of that alien dive Sawyer likes to go to?”  There was some squawking and chuckling between himself and the ones on the other end of the signal.  “I dunno, I got somebody here looking for an alien hangout…. What?  I dunno, she looks like she could be one herself, how the hell do I know?”  Some more squawking and back and forth.  “Yeah, alright, thanks.”

She looked at him hopefully.  “Do you have the coordinates for this… bar?”

“Co-ordinates,” he repeated with unrestrained sarcasm.  “Yeah…”  He pulled a slip of paper from the pad on his belt, scribbled something on it, and handed it to her.  “Here.  Good luck.”

  
  


*****************

  
  


Astra struggled to understand the humans’ inefficient system for locating places, but she eventually worked out where she wanted to go.  It was enough of a task to occupy the forefront of her mind while, under the surface, her brain was still trying to find the names and systems and facts and faces she had lost.    


She found the place.  She could see through the brick walls that the place was full of varied species.  How had she not known this existed when she was here before?  Had she forgotten it?  The creatures inside did not seem familiar.  Some were species she did not even recognize.  She did not think any of them were Fort Rozz alumni.     


A slot opened in the metal door beside her and a pair of reddish eyes peered out.  “You want something, lady?”

“Yes,” she said.  “I wish to enter.  I am looking for an alien.”

“Oh yeah?  What’s the password?”

She sighed with irritation.  “I do not know your password.  I need your assistance.”

“Sorry.  No password, no entry.”  The slot slammed shut.

Astra felt a frustration well up in her chest.  She uttered a curse in Kryptonian and pounded a fist against the wall next to the door.  It shattered under her blow, flooding the bar with daylight, and leaving her standing in the gaping hole she’d created.  She would have to re-learn her strength again, she realized.  She stepped through the opening, her boots crunching on the rubble that she’d strewn across the tiled floor.  She had not intended to make such a dramatic entry, but it seemed foolish to admit that it had been a mistake at this point.  She decided to commit.  She lifted her voice, let it boom in the low-ceilinged room.  “I am looking for Kara Zor-El!” she shouted to the crowd of startled creatures inside.  Some were cowering behind their tables, others brandishing long sticks that appeared to be part of some game involving a table and balls on the other side of the room.    


A figure came running out of the back; small, dressed in black, dark hair that hung to her chin, brandishing a weapon, with a ferocious look in her eye.  That spark, that fire … they were familiar.  This… this was the one.  This was her warrior.  The woman stopped, staring at her through narrowed eyes, looking at her as if she were seeing the dead, which indeed, she was.  “Astra?” the woman whispered, pale as the sand by the sea.    


And some broken pathway sparked within Astra’s brain, and a name tumbled off her lips:

“Alexandra.”  And then her vision flickered, and everything was black.


	4. Chapter 4

Literally the last thing Alex had expected when she came running out of the bathroom was to find the wall smashed open and Astra standing amid the rubble. The last thing she expected after that was that this living specter of her pain and sorrow would whisper her name and then faint, falling to the ground. She ran back into the bathroom, and did the only thing she could think to do. She called Maggie. Maggie promised she'd be there as soon as she could.

Alex could hear M’gann the bartender pulling the big, heavy pulse shotgun from underneath the bar, and the hum of it powering it up. She could hear the murmurs of confusion among the afternoon regulars, trying to figure out what they ought to do. She heard the sounds of rubble shifting, and then M’gann’s voice sounding very stern: “I would move very slowly if I were you.”

And then Astra’s voice, sounding a little weary: “Where is the woman who was just here? Alexandra? I need to see her again.”

A higher-pitched whine as M’gann pulled back a choke pin on the pulse gun. “I don’t think the lady wants to talk to you,” she said firmly.

Alex took a deep breath, and stepped out of the bathroom, and into the bar. “It’s alright, M’gann. I’ll talk to her.” She had wiped her tears away and steadied her voice, and although her fingers were cold and numb, she walked forward with as much confidence as she could muster.

M’gann kept the pulse shotgun pointed at Astra.

“Astra…” Alex peered at her for a moment. “Is that really you?”

Astra nodded. “It is.”

“How… how is this possible? You were dead.”

M’gann tsked quietly to herself. “Girl, please, nobody stays dead around here,” she muttered.

Alex tossed a look over her shoulder, but stepped closer.

“My body was retrieved by a highly advanced race. Their reasons for repairing me, I do not know. They could not return me to Krypton, so instead, I chose here.”

Alex bit her lip hard enough that it bled a little. She had to make sure she wasn’t dreaming, or that M’gann hadn’t accidentally given her some of that space rum that got Mon-El drunk but gave humans hallucinations. “Why?”

Astra looked at her and her eyes seemed lost, hollow, and sad. “Because I have nowhere else to go.” She looked at M’gann, and then back at Alex. “Will your guard allow me to stand?”

“I’m not a guard, I’m a bartender,” M’gann interjected. “I’ll still shoot you, though.”

Alex glanced at M’gann, then back at the giant hole that Astra had punched in the wall. “Why’d you do that?”

Astra frowned. “That creature refused me entry because I did not know the password.”

Alex shook her head. Some things never changed. One of them was apparently Astra being permanently extra. “So you punched a giant hole in the wall.”

Astra’s cheeks flushed a little. “I… did not intend for that to happen. I am still getting used to having this strength again. It had left me.”

Alex was so overwhelmed with emotion that she was numb inside. Whatever or whoever this Astra was, she was not quite the same as the last time they’d seen each other. She turned back to M’gann. “It was just a mistake, M’gann. She didn’t mean to punch the wall down. Let her get up.”

M’gann pursed her mouth, clearly disapproving, and put the weapon back under the bar.

Astra climbed to her feet. She dusted herself off and looked around at the mess, seeming a little embarrassed. She moved a little closer to Alex. “Alexandra,” she said, lifting a hand to touch her. Alex flinched, and Astra saw that, and her shoulders slumped. She stopped, and clasped her hands behind her back. Light years’ worth of regret reverberated between them at that aborted touch. “I did not come to hurt you.”

“Why not?” Alex demanded warily.

Astra gave her that quizzical look, just as she remembered it. “Why would I?”

She didn’t remember, Alex realized. She wondered how far the memory loss went.

“We fought, yes,” Astra said, “but I held you in great regard.”

It was Alex’s turn to turn red and shuffle uncomfortably.

“What the fuck is this?” came Maggie’s voice from the other side of the gaping hole. She stepped in through the rubble and saw Alex and Astra. “M’gann, is everything cool, here?”

M’gann shrugged. “As cool as it can be with a giant hole in the wall.”

Alex saw Maggie’s hand at her waist, ready to draw. She shook her head. Maggie frowned and walked closer, moving warily. She looked Astra up and down. Then she stepped close to Alex, drew her in, and embraced her. She looked deep in her eyes, and Alex saw the concern in them. Alex glanced back at Astra, and saw her posture falter again for half a moment.

Astra glanced between her and Maggie. “She is yours?” she asked Alex.

“Yeah, I’m hers,” Maggie answered, “and she’s mine. And you’re Astra, huh?”

Astra’s face was hard to read. “I am.” She seemed faintly pleased that Maggie knew who she was.

Maggie casually slid an arm around Alex’s waist. “What’s up? Are you okay?” she asked softly.

Alex shrugged. She didn’t know if she was okay.

Maggie looked pointedly at Astra. “So. It’s great of you to stop by our favorite bar and smash holes in the wall and scare the shit out of everyone… but um, we need to get going.”

“Wait.” Astra’s eyes became wide and desperate. “I did not know you were here, Alexandra. I was looking for my niece…. For Kara.”

Alex rubbed the back of her neck, frowning. “Look, we should take you to the DEO.”

Astra stiffened. “No DEO.”

Alex sighed. “Astra, if that wall was really an accident, then you need to be someplace properly fortified while you get used to your powers again. We can’t have you running around breaking buildings while you get your sea legs.”

Astra seemed to shrink into herself. “No cage. No … no green lights.”

Alex nodded. “OK.”

“Give me your word.”

Alex stared at her. Alex couldn’t remember having seen her afraid, even in death. “Astra, I promise you. No cage, no Kryptonite. If they try it, I’ll kick their asses myself.”

She felt Maggie throw her a little sidelong glance, but she didn’t say anything.

Alex was good on her word. She made sure that J’onn understood the situation, that Astra was not quite her old self and was not to be treated like a prisoner. Alex called Kara down to the DEO, and stood outside the room, watching through the glass as they wept on each other, talking for what seemed like hours, grasping each other’s hands and sometimes each other’s faces.

“You, uh, undersold the whole ‘genetically superior specimen’ thing,” Maggie observed, and Alex couldn't tell if she was joking.

“What?”

“I mean, you talked about her personal qualities a lot, but you didn't mention that she looked… Like that.”

“I didn't think it was important,” Alex answered curtly.

Maggie smiled gently and nudged her arm. “Relax, babe. I'm not even mad at you. I mean, Jesus…” She gazed into the room for a minute. “She’s built like a Greek statue. No wonder she made your little gay heart go pitty pat.”

Alex wasn't clear on whether this was sympathy or teasing or jealousy or Maggie contemplating what it would be like to sleep with Alex’s recently resurrected lover (Alex hated that word but didn't have another that suited) but she didn't like any of her choices. “Maggie,” she snapped, “please stop.”

“Sorry.” Maggie’s mouth snapped shut and she watched without further comment.

Kara and Astra exchanged a long embrace, and then Kara emerged from the room, her eyes still damp.

“What did she say?” Alex asked nervously.

Kara shook her head. “A lot of things. She seems like she doesn’t remember everything.” She looked at Alex for a long moment. “She wants to talk to you.”

Alex looked at her cautiously. “Why?”

Kara shrugged. She and Alex hugged, exchanged a few soft words of assurance, and Kara left.

Alex walked in, palms sweating. Astra beckoned her closer. “I do not remember everything,” she began without preamble. “I remember that we fought. I remember your fierceness. It gave me joy to fight you. And I know we took pleasure in each other, more than the one time permitted by custom.” She added wistfully, “Although I cannot remember it.”

Alex was glad the room was soundproof.

“I had forgotten your face, too, until the moment I saw you. I had forgotten that you were as beautiful as this.”

“Astra…” Alex began.

Astra put a hand up. “No, please listen. Kara has told me that my husband is dead. I know that you belong to the small one who waits for you outside this room. I am… glad for you, that you are not alone, as it seems I now am. She seems to burn as you do. It pleases me that you have found a worthy mate.”

Alex shoved her hands in her pockets to stop them from trembling.

“And I thank you for being honorable enough to see to it that I am treated well here.”

“Astra, it is the very least that I owe you.” Alex felt her voice tremble.

“I cannot remember all of what passed between us two, but I…” Astra struggled. “I hope that she awakens those things in you that I could not.”

She felt like a hot stone weighed heavy her chest. The things that Astra had awakened in her were precisely what had made her such a wreck in the first place. Astra’s memories might have gaps but it was clear that she remembered wanting Alex in all the same ways that Alex had wanted her and couldn’t bring herself to admit.

The tears welled up again. Goddamnit. “Astra,” she choked. “Astra, I'm so sorry…” And she sobbed for a few moments, ashamed to be going to pieces in front of Astra, who seemed somewhat less stoic than Alex remembered her.

Astra listened for a moment, her head tilted to the side thoughtfully. A look of recognition dawned on her face as she sat watching Alex weep. “It was you,” she breathed. “It was you who killed me.”


	5. Chapter 5

Maggie didn't know what she had expected Astra to look like, but it wasn't this. She had expected some big, blonde, butchy military woman with a lot of swagger. Sort of a more macho version of Kara, she supposed. Definitely not this gorgeous, leonine brunette with the haunted blue eyes, stiffly formal demeanor, and a rock and roll white streak in her hair. You could see all the broken bits in that chick from halfway down the block, just like you could with Alex.

Maggie wished she could hear the exchange between Alex and Astra, but then, part of her thought, maybe she didn’t. She saw Alex break down again, and then Astra seemed to remember something. She saw Astra tear the top of her jumpsuit open, and indicate a scar in the middle of her chest. She saw Alex cover her mouth and then, there were some more words between them. Astra didn't seem angry, just sad. Alex was a wreck.

Alex came to her and Maggie held her for a while. They went back to Alex’s place. Alex didn’t want to talk much about her conversation with Astra, other than to say that Astra forgave her. She had a few glasses of wine, and then she wanted sex, so Maggie took her to bed and fucked her until they were both gleaming with sweat. Alex kissed her neck, and her mouth, and told her how much she loved her, and appreciated her being so strong.

Alex went to sleep, then. Maggie didn’t. She lay awake, wondering what lay ahead of them. She knew Alex loved her. But Astra was the one that got away, and the first woman she’d had feelings for, on top of it. It was hard not to mythologize that. And she knew Alex well enough to know that she’d want to make things right for Astra, whatever that meant.

She decided to head things off. She offered the next day to accompany Alex to the DEO after work and see if Astra needed anything or wanted any company. Alex seemed surprised, but accepted her offer. So they went together.

When they arrived, Astra was sitting on her bed among an assortment of pretty floral print dresses, looking dismayed. Kara had brought them for her, thinking she’d want street clothes for when she was ready to venture out again. Maggie chuckled to herself. Judging by the assortment of crushed aluminum drinking cups littered on the table in the room, Astra wouldn’t be ready for that for a few more days. And then she chuckled again, because while she could imagine that those dresses would look great on a beautiful woman like Astra, they were about the last thing that she’d imagine to be her style.

“We’ll bring you something else,” Alex promised.

Maggie sat in a chair while Alex told Astra stories about what she’d been doing since they’d last seen each other, how she’d met Maggie, the cases she’d worked, the trips she’d taken. Maggie listened and watched. Astra sat absorbing, hanging on Alex’s every word. When Alex talked about the times she and Maggie fought together, like their raid on the underground fight club, Astra’s eyes lit up, bouncing between Alex and her. Maggie contributed here and there to those stories. Talk of combat seemed to stir something in Astra. Maggie understood. Whatever gaps remained for Astra, she remembered fighting as something that she was good at, that she took joy in. Maggie saw that spark and understood why Alex had been attracted to it, as if her raw physical beauty weren’t enough.

When the conversation hit a lull, Astra looked at Alex. “Thank you for coming to visit me.”

Alex thumbed over at Maggie. “It was her idea.”

Astra looked mildly surprised, but inclined her head toward Maggie. “Thank you.”

 

  
********

 

They went together the next day with new clothes; some jeans, a few lightweight sweaters in burgundy, emerald, and midnight blue. Maggie dropped some of her own money on a black motorcycle jacket that she thought would suit her. Alex balked. Maggie shrugged. “It’s on clearance,” she said, pointing at the tag. “Look.”

“It’s still a hundred bucks,” Alex protested.

“Look,” Maggie argued, “you wanna do right by her, right?”

Alex nodded.

“Well, I wanna help you. Let me buy the jacket.”

“She doesn't need it.”

“Even army girls like to look good. It'll be good for her morale.”

Alex relented.

Astra looked as good in those clothes as Maggie suspected she would, the jacket especially. She reflected that it was probably an unwise decision to make her look that hot. She rationalized it by deciding that she could appreciate it too. And for the most part, that was true.

But it turned into an everyday thing, over the week and a half that Astra remained at the DEO. She and Alex would go after work, and she’d mostly sit and listen while Alex and Astra talked, occasionally contributing a comment here or there. The awkwardness of the conversations slowly thawed, at least between the two of them. They talked a great deal about Kara. Astra wanted to hear the growing up stories that she’d never gotten to hear. Alex wanted to hear about Kara’s childhood before Earth. Alex brought her books to read, mostly military history, which she devoured faster than Maggie had ever seen anyone do. Astra particularly enjoyed the history of the American Revolution and the guerilla tactics they employed. Each day the pile of crushed aluminum cups was smaller and there was less dented furniture. She would be ready soon.

It was a difficult trudge for Maggie. She knew it could backfire and push Alex into Astra’s arms. But she knew that this was beyond unusual, and that trying to keep Alex from seeing her and from trying to make amends would only drive a wedge into her own relationship. The way she figured, Alex was ruined by guilt and grief, and this was an opportunity to heal that wound. It was an inexplicable gift, she decided. She knew that where her own psychic wounds were concerned, the ability to make redress to the dead would have been worth a hell of a lot.

So she gritted her teeth and tried her best to proactively support Alex. She accompanied her on all her visits. She suggested bringing pizza and Chinese food when Astra offhandedly mentioned that the bland DEO rations were growing tiresome. Astra discovered that she shared her niece’s fondness for potstickers.

“So Astra,” Maggie asked one day, as their visit was nearing an end, “J’onn says that he thinks you’re probably ready to leave. What will you do?”

Astra sighed. “I will go to stay with Kara. Beyond that, I do not know. I … still wish to save this world, but I no longer know how.”

Maggie nodded thoughtfully. “Well, we all want that. You’ll find your place.”

They helped her get settled at Kara’s place, despite her not technically needing help because she had little but the books and clothes that Maggie and Alex had brought her. Well, and that even if she had a sofa to move, she could have done it herself, with one hand, probably. As they were saying goodbye, Alex and Maggie exchanged hugs with Kara, and then paused awkwardly before Astra.

“I will not break you,” Astra promised, a hint of mischief in her tone. “You have my word.”

Maggie awkwardly hugged her, absorbing the faint scent of something leafy and green, and noting how similar it was to hugging Kara; she was warm and felt incredibly dense and heavy, but still somehow soft. Then Astra quickly hugged Alex.

They agreed that the frequency of their visits would slow now that Astra had moved in with Kara. Alex was endlessly thankful for all of Maggie’s efforts. It wasn’t easy.

Whatever the resolution was going to be though, Maggie hoped it would come soon. She felt a part of Alex pulling away from her, despite the fact that their lovemaking at nights had become ever more hungry and desperate. And she felt a part of herself pulling away too, fearing that she was about to have her heart broken.

But they held on, because love was love, and worth holding onto through some bumpy times.

For now, Maggie would do her best to pretend she didn’t see the way Alex’s eyes had closed, the way she had held her breath when she hugged Astra goodbye. It wasn’t going to do anyone any good to think about that.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some of y'all are very thirsty today so I'm giving you two chapters today. ;)

Astra found Kara’s home small, but comfortable enough. She kept her pantry well stocked. Being on Earth made her hungry all the time. At least she was with what remained of her family. She spent a lot of time looking at pictures, at video, trying to replace more memories. She looked at news video of herself and Non, attacking a building downtown. She only vaguely recognized herself. She recognized him, and again, felt that sadness. She suspected that she associated no happiness with her marriage to him. They were grim years of her life, the rebellion and imprisonment and exile, and she felt intuitively that toward the end, he was holding on to an idea that she no longer believed in. What she felt when she looked at him was a species of love, she supposed, but it was also simply the weight of shared history.

She most wished she could remember the times she had had with Alexandra. She retained little flashes of their battles, and one moment where Alexandra was leading her to (she thought) a prisoner exchange. She remembered cold metal cuffs on her wrists, of that she was certain. She remembered Alexandra's anguish at watching the tin soldiers torture her with kryptonite, her trying to stop them.  She spent more hours than she wished to admit, looking at pictures of Alexandra, hoping they might call something forth. So far, she had been unsuccessful.

Alexandra’s weeping at the DEO had sounded like the other voice in the memory of her own death. She recognized it. She made a mighty effort to convince Alexandra that she harbored no anger, that she was pleased to have been given a warrior’s death at the hand of someone whom she held in such high regard, that she understood a soldier’s duty in battle. But the human’s heart did not seem comforted by it. Astra wished she could have touched her then, but she recalled how Alexandra had flinched at her hand when they were in the bar, and thought better of it.

She spent evenings with Kara, peppering her with questions about Alex, what she was like when she was younger, eagerly listening to stories about her getting in trouble, feeling some warmth at the knowledge that someone who was so troubled in her youth had grown into the spectacular being she had become.

Astra spent time looking at pictures of Maggie. She read everything she could find. She was fascinated. She saw an exemplary service record. Marksmanship awards. Commendations. She would expect no less of one who was joined to Alexandra but it still pleased her. And she had that light, that inner light that Alexandra had. So rare, so bright.

She found Maggie’s disposition to their peculiar situation interesting. She was gracious, helpful, considerate, but also never left Alexandra’s side. It was clear that she regarded Astra as a threat, which she was wise to do under the circumstances, but did not feel inclined to treat her with anything but kindness. It spoke of confidence in herself, and in the bond she shared with Alexandra.

Alex, she reminded herself. Kara had told her that she preferred Alex. Astra preferred Alexandra, but she was trying to get used to Alex.

Astra understood Alex’s attraction to Maggie. Maggie was made of the same stuff as Alex. There were differences, of course. Maggie Sawyer seemed more comfortable in her skin than Alex ever would be, but they shared that carnality, that spirit that hungered for a fight, and, Astra wagered, the same beautiful, human lusts. Maggie was small, she thought with passing amusement, remembering occasions on which she’d seen her wearing a POLICE jacket that seemed comically large on her. But she was beautiful in a way that was uniquely human. And she was not not too small for Alex. She found herself wondering what they looked like together in the heat of pleasure. It was probably more intriguing than it ought to be, and she found herself stuck in that line of thought for several minutes.

She cleaned the house every day, which never took very long. Inevitably, she ended up calling Kara several times during the day to ask her something or other. _There is a man in a uniform knocking on the door. He says he has a package for you. Are you sure it is safe? What are all of these noises from the apartment downstairs? How do I procure more of those sweet, sticky things that we had for breakfast?_

It didn’t take long for Kara to ask with exasperation if she could call Alex for some of these things. “Donuts. I’m sure she can get you some more donuts,” she sighed.

Alex answered the phone with a bewildered tone. “Donuts? Um, yeah, I … we… we can bring some by later.”

She called Alex another time when she was thwarted by the concept of coffee and needed it explained. She held the bag of the sandy substance in front of her, after having spit some into the sink. “Kara told me I might enjoy some coffee,” she wondered, “but it tastes terrible. It is like sand. Why do you humans enjoy this?”

Alex paused. “What do you mean? Did you add milk and sugar to it?”

“Milk and sugar?” Astra repeated. “You are supposed to mix them? But it will be like mud.”

“What?” Alex demanded. “Wait, did you brew it?”

“Brew it?”

A pause. “You… you’re just trying to eat the stuff straight out of the bag?”

“Yes.”

Alex laughed for about five minutes before explaining to her how to use Kara’s coffee machine to brew a hot beverage that, once she prepared it according to Alex’s very detailed instruction, reminded her of home.

 

  
************

 

  
She had conversed a few times at the DEO with Kara’s short friend, the man-boy they called Winn. He seemed nervous around her. She could not remember him, but she suspected that she may have threatened his life at some point. She asked him if he would consider designing her a suit, so that perhaps she could assist her niece on rescues and missions.

“A… a suit? Like Kara’s?”

“Of course.”

“And… would I get to name you?”

“I have a name.”

“No no, like a superhero name. You know like, Kara has Supergirl and uh, you know, there’s the Guardian, or … The Flash... you know.” He petered out. “Superhero names.”

Astra frowned. She could do without the nomenclature. But if it would induce him to fabricate her a suit, perhaps it was worthwhile. She wasn’t entirely sure that superheroing the way her niece did was the way forward for her, but she had lost her old purpose and path, and needed a new one. That was as good a one as any, at least for now. She made sure that he knew that her family’s crest was not the same as the House of El.

She called Alex to ask her opinion about the idea. Alex was hesitant. “I… I think that’s great, if that’s what you want to do.”

“I do not know, but I do not know what else to do.”

Alex was quiet for a moment. “I think you can do whatever you want to do.”

“But … I am not the same as I was. They did a good job repairing me, but … this brain … it is… unreliable. I fainted when I first saw you and I still do not know why.”

“You’ll find your purpose,” Alex promised her, her voice confident and reassuring. “And once you do, you’ll be yourself again.”

Astra was not sure she wanted to be that self anymore.

They talked for a while after that, about the news of the day. Astra was educating herself on geopolitics. Alex was glad to help.

“Well, you know, you could always go save the polar bears or something,” Alex joked. Astra did not understand the joke. She resolved to go look this up later.

They talked more often after that. Astra called her, sometimes inventing questions she could easily answer for herself, only to hear her voice. Their calls became longer, more relaxed. Alexandra was intelligent, wry, funny, and loved explaining politics. Her voice made Astra feel warm and she was always reluctant to end their talks. She did not ask if Maggie knew of these talks. It was not, she told herself, her burden to bear.

She called one afternoon with a heavy question that she did not know if Alexandra would answer. “I have been trying to remember things,” she said, “about you and me, before.”

She heard Alex sigh. “Astra, maybe you don’t want to do that.”

“But, Alexandra... I remember feeling desire, and I had not felt that in many years. I know that I felt more alive with you than I had since I was young. And now, I am … nowhere. I am not dead anymore, but I am not yet living again. I… want to feel alive.”

Alex’s breathing seemed labored. “Astra…”

“I understand we cannot have each other that way now. I have no wish to come between you and Maggie. She is brave and good, like you. I only want to remember. What it was like. I try and try, but it remains just outside my grasp.”

There was a long quiet, in which Alex seemed to be repairing to a quieter location. She heard a door close. Alex’s voice was soft and hesitant. “It was five times in all,” she began. “You always initiated it. I always pushed back at first, but then we always… I wanted to kiss you. We kissed ...hard. Everything about it was always hard.” There was another long pause in which Alex’s breathing seemed loud. “It hurt. I always went home with marks. I liked the way it hurt, though.”

“Yes… I remember that…” Astra felt her body wakening at these words. Her mouth suddenly recalled those rough kisses. “Your body … was so very soft,” she whispered, the feel of it suddenly vivid in her senses. “And you bit me many times.”

Alex made some strangled little sound. “Astra…”

“I am sorry,” Astra said. “I should not have-”

“No, it’s alright.”

Nerves stretched and synapses crackled and neurons fired as Astra was filled with memories and hunger.

Alex forged on. “You … you liked to be inside me…”

“You enjoyed that,” Astra whispered, and her fingers instantly recalled being inside Alex when she was hot and slick with arousal.

“I did,” Alex whispered in an agonized voice, “I couldn’t tell you I did, but I did. You were so strong…”

The sense memories came streaming back. “I took you standing up… I was not gentle... I loved your surrender…” Astra felt suddenly aflame, aching with need that Alex could not soothe for her. “I remember now…”

"...Astra… I said I didn’t want you but that wasn’t true...”

Suddenly this all felt wrong. She had taken this someplace she should not have. “Alexandra… thank you for helping me to … remember…”

“Astra…” Her voice was pleading.

She could hear Alex’s torment. Astra had not wanted to make her feel this way. This was a mistake. “Alexandra, I have to go.”

“No…”

“Goodbye, Alex.” She hung up and lay there on the couch; frustrated, sad, burning. But very much alive.

 


	7. Chapter 7

Alex had had to readjust her sense of who Astra was.  She had been powerful, dangerous, competent, stoic.  Now she was still powerful, but she was a little lost, and that loneliness in her that Alex had only vaguely been aware of before was evident in every communication.  Those ridiculous excuses for phone calls.  She was fumbling with a more human lifestyle and looking for a path and a purpose.    


Alex, in those phone calls, came to know her brilliance with science, and her quick, intuitive understanding of Earth’s tangled global politics.  She found that Astra actually had a very low-key sense of humor, and came to recognize by the faintest lilt in Astra’s voice when she was subtly joking with her.  She had only known Astra the warrior before, and now she was coming to know Astra the woman.  She couldn't help wondering what it would be like to love her in the daylight.

But she was with Maggie now.  Maggie was the reason she was able to love openly and accept herself in the first place.  She told herself that she had dealt with Astra as a missed opportunity, no matter how sad.  Friendship would be enough.  Redress would be enough, despite Astra’s insistence that none was needed.

But then, she wasn't telling Maggie about those phone calls, was she.

That had to change, though.  That last conversation with Astra had thrown Alex into chaos.  They had mostly avoided talking about their sexual history up until that point, but Astra pleaded with her that she wanted to remember it, and against her better judgment, Alex had relented.  It had immediately awakened the twin weights of lust and guilt, in both of them, it seemed, because Astra hurried off the phone when she realized what it was doing to Alex to talk about it with her.

Alex doused those feelings in about three shots of scotch and asked Maggie to come over.  They stood together in the kitchen while Alex poured herself a fourth.

Maggie kissed her cheek and nodded toward the bottle.  “How many is that for you?”

Alex waved noncommittally.  “Only a couple.”

Maggie nodded and leaned against the counter in that cocky way that Alex loved.  She was so fucking hot, her Maggie.  She launched into things without introduction.  “So listen, um.  You should know that Astra’s been calling me.”

Maggie tilted her head curiously.  “Okay.  And?”

“Well, Kara was getting tired of her constantly calling her at work for things so she told her to call me sometimes … That's why I asked you to bring her donuts that one time?”

Maggie nodded.  “Right.  Kryptonians and their donuts,” she replied, smirking.

“Anyway she started calling me for really dumb stuff and you know, it was obvious she was just lonely so I would talk to her a little.”

“How come you didn't mention it before?”

Alex shrugged.  “I felt wrong about it, I guess.”

Maggie shook her head.  “Alex,” she began, “I get what she means to you, and I'm trying really fucking hard to be supportive, okay? But-”

“I know! I know you are, that's why I'm telling you now.  But listen, just… Just listen.”  She took a breath.  “She called me today and it… got weird.”

Maggie stiffened.  “Weird how?”

“She… Couldn't remember what it was like when we … she wanted to know about our sex.”  There wasn't really any delicate way to put that.  “She couldn't remember it and she …”

Maggie looked at her for what felt like an eternity.  “So, what?  You jogged her memory?”

Alex nodded. 

“So?  Was it phone sex or what?”  Maggie was still restraining herself but it was clear that she was unhappy with the direction of this.

Alex grabbed her by the waist.  “No, Maggie, no,” she said frantically, “it wasn't like that… It just got uncomfortable and we hung up, that's all, I swear, but … I wanted you to know, that's all.”  She knew she was leaving a lot out but still, she couldn’t keep it a secret.  She owed Maggie that.  Her hands grasped at Maggie’s jacket and squeezed her shoulders.  “Maggie, it's you that I want, just you, I … I made my peace with what she was to me before, I promise you-”

Maggie put a finger on Alex’s lips.  “What did you tell her?” she asked softly.

“I… I told her what it was like…” Alex answered, confused.

“Tell me,” Maggie pressed.  She slid her arms around Alex’s waist, nuzzling the side of her neck.  “You never told me.  What was it like?”

Alex looked away, flushing.  “Maggie…”

“You can tell me anything,” Maggie whispered, her breath hot on Alex’s ear.  “Tell me what it was like with her.”

“It was… It was hot,” Alex said slowly, shame coloring her face.  “And… And rough.”

“Hm,” Maggie replied with interest.    


“I always left with bruises, bite marks.”

Maggie pulled Alex’s body closer to hers, nested her fingers in Alex’s hair, and yanked her head back.  “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Alex sighed.    


Maggie sank her teeth into the side of Alex’s neck and a twinge of pain shot down her back.  “And you liked that.”

Alex moaned.  “Yes…”

Maggie backed her against the countertop.  Her voice was thick and raspy as she pressed her hips against Alex’s.  “How did she fuck you?”

Alex felt herself grinding in response.  “Maggie, I-”

Maggie bit her neck again, and again, the delicious hurt shot through her nerves.  “You can tell me anything, babe.  I want to hear it.”

“Always standing up,” Alex managed, feeling herself growing wet for the second time today.  “Mostly up against a wall, once bent over a … a table.”

Maggie’s hands undid Alex’s belt and trousers and yanked them down enough to push two fingers into her.  Alex cried out.  “Was she rough?”

“Yes,” Alex gasped.

Maggie gave her a couple of jackhammer thrusts that made Alex groan with pleasure that struck deep, and demanded, “Like this?”

And Alex could only silently nod as her knees went weak and she leaned back against the counter with her eyes closed and her mouth slack, and let herself be fucked for a few moments.

And God, it was good.  But… but it wasn't Maggie.  It was Maggie trying to give her what she thought Astra gave her and Alex realized in that moment, much as the thought of it set her body on fire, that it was never really about that.  “Wait,” she gasped.  “Wait.”  She grabbed Maggie’s wrists and stilled her hand.

Maggie paused, her dark eyes roiling with lust and something fiery that Alex couldn't presume to name.    


“I don't need you to be her,” Alex murmured, tracing a finger down Maggie’s face.  “I just need you to be you.”  She kissed her, deeply but not hard.  “Fuck me,” she whispered, “like  _ you _ do it.”

Maggie knelt down, pulling Alex’s pants all the way to her ankles, then rose again, depositing a hot kiss on her inner thigh on her way up.  She placed her hands against the backs of Alex’s thighs and hiked her up onto the counter.  Alex wrapped her legs around Maggie's waist, losing herself in salty kisses as Maggie took her with the soft intensity that Alex loved.   


“Do you still love me?” Maggie whispered.

“Yes,” Alex panted.

“Do you like the way we fuck?”

“Yes.”  Alex moaned.

“Say my name, Alex,” Maggie urged.

“Maggie,” she panted, her heart pounding in her ears, “Maggie, I love you so much… You're all I want, Maggie… God, yes, like that…”

Alex didn't know if Maggie believed her.  She wasn't sure she believed herself.  They clung to each other that night.  If this love was going to end, it would not go quietly.


	8. Chapter 8

Maggie knocked on Kara’s door. Astra answered, wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, her hair tied back in a messy ponytail, her face smudged here and there with dirt. “Maggie,” she said, seeming surprised. “I am…” She glanced over her shoulder at the apartment. “I am doing something called deep cleaning. They have said on the television that you are supposed to use this ...concoction... to clean the baseboards, only...” She looked a little crestfallen. “I do not know what they are.”

Maggie gave her a tight smile. “Can I come in? I’ll show you.” She held up a box of Krispy Kremes. “I brought donuts too.”

Astra smiled, and stood aside to let her in. Maggie gazed for a moment at the cut of her shoulders and the muscles of her arms. She was impressive. Despite herself, Alex’s description their sex lingered in Maggie’s mind, and for half a moment as she stood there staring at Astra’s muscular back, she couldn’t help picturing it. She batted it away.

She walked in and showed Astra what baseboards were. Astra thanked her and offered a coffee, clearly still feeling pleased that she knew how to make it. Maggie felt obliged to accept.

“So,” Astra asked as she poured water into the coffee machine, “have you come for a reason?”

Maggie nodded. “Yeah. I’m just … I’m trying to understand what it was between you and Alex. It’s… it’s hard for her to talk about.” Maggie was banking on Astra’s frankness to finally make sense of things.

Astra leaned back against the fridge while the coffee brewed. “Maggie, I honor your bond, and have no intention to come between you.”

Maggie smiled. “I know that. But she’s having a hard time with all this. And I’m pretty sure you don’t have anyone to talk to about it either because you can’t tell Kara. Right?”

Astra nodded. “A reasonable deduction.”

“Well, I am a detective.” The smell of coffee started to fill the apartment. Maggie took a moment to collect herself and then began. In a way, it was refreshing to speak bluntly. “You had sex five times. That’s not a lot, not by our standards, anyway. You didn’t know each other aside from the times you fought, and the time you spent in the DEO prison. But it feels a lot bigger than that, the way she talks about what happened. Why does it feel like there’s something I’m not understanding?”

Astra nodded slowly. “Because there is.”

“She said something about a custom, sex with your enemy or something? I didn’t really get it.”

Astra considered for a moment how to explain. “I am not certain that she really ‘got it’ either, so it does not surprise me that she struggled to communicate it to you.”

Maggie frowned, confused. “In ancient Greece, some of the soldiers on the same side were sometimes encouraged to have sex with each other so they’d fight harder to protect each other. But … why the enemy?”

“There are very few warrior spirits in this world. They are rare and beautiful. When one encounters them, they demand recognition. Even if they are on opposing sides of a battle.”

“Recognition,” Maggie repeated, trying to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

“Yes. Like that which you felt when you met Alexandra.”

Maggie reflected for a moment how she and Alex had clashed at first, but then how quickly they had found themselves on the same side, how quickly they had fallen for each other. The ease and contentment she felt when they worked a case together, the shared adrenaline of facing danger side by side. “Warrior spirit, huh? So it's like a…” She fumbled for a moment. “Like a religious thing?”

Astra thought for a moment. “That is the best way to explain it, yes.” A few awkward silent moments passed while Maggie mulled this and Astra waited for her to say more. She went on, “Kel-Lo and Rana were the first _kothirim_ , warrior spirits, before history was recorded. They took joy in the hunt, in the battle, in pleasures of the flesh. They were noble and strong, and they cleaved to one another as lovers and mates. Each was legend in their own right. When they passed on into Rao’s light, Rao shattered their spirits into fragments and scattered them across all existence, as ashes before the wind. When one warrior finds another with the light of Kel-lo and Rana in their souls, it is cause for celebration. Often they become mates. But even if they are on opposing sides of a war, they are permitted by custom to share their bodies with one another, once, on the eve of battle, out of respect to the light that dwells within them.”

“Because they’re so rare.”

“Yes.”

“So fucking Alex was a religious experience,” Maggie remarked with a smirk. “I think that might be overselling it.” Though Maggie had to admit, she and Alex had found each other’s needs and rhythms more quickly than other relationships she’d had, despite Alex’s limited experience. “Who decides who’s a _kothirim_ and who’s not?”

Astra considered the question. “There is no deciding. You feel it. You see one another. As I saw Alexandra. She saw me too, although she did not understand what she saw.”

Maggie had been in California for a long time now, but it all sounded a little woo-woo to her. “Are you sure you two didn’t just bond because you were both lonely and in the closet?”

“Closet?” Astra frowned. “We never had sex in a closet.”

Maggie realized she had to try and limit the slang. “In a lot of cultures here,” she explained, “same sex relationships aren’t, uh… considered socially acceptable, or at least, they’re considered less acceptable than a man/woman relationship. At the time that Alex and you were… having your thing, she hadn’t accepted that she was attracted to women. When someone has that problem, when they can’t accept themselves for what they are, we say they’re in the closet.”

Astra looked confused. “Why would that be something they needed to accept? On Krypton, this was never even viewed as an issue.”

“Well, it’s different here.” Maggie sighed. “Anyway, she was a mess, then. And you know, you were lonely in your marriage… And she’s beautiful, and you’re beautiful...”

Astra shook her head. “My marriage is… difficult to explain. We were bonded in a way that was true and strong. But I had not felt physical desire in many long years until I found Alex.” She turned her back, ostensibly to pour the coffee, but Maggie figured she was hiding grief. “When I recognized her spirit, I had the right to one night with her before we fought. Non knew. It was expected. But it was… not enough for me. I was drawn to her again and again. I began to feel that we were meant to fight beside each other. If …” She faltered, and then took longer than she needed to find milk and sugar. “How many sugars do you take?” Her voice was slightly strained.

Maggie usually liked it black, but since Astra had gone to the trouble of taking them out, she said, “Just one, thanks.” Whether this stuff was real or not, Maggie thought, it was clear that Astra, memory gaps and all, was still hung up on Alex. And Alex, despite her commitment to Maggie, couldn’t seem to shake what she had felt with Astra. “Well, neither of you seem to be able to let go of what happened.”

“All my years of fighting and I never found another. When you touch another _kothirim_ , you feel it. Even if you do not wish to acknowledge it, even if you push it away.”

Maggie thought briefly of how electric it had been the first time Alex had kissed her. How she had been unable to escape the pull of that electricity despite fearing the pressure of being Alex’s reason for coming out. She shook her head, and sipped from the steaming mug of coffee that Astra had set in front of her. “Really? All those fighters you trained in Fort Rozz and not one? Not even your husband?”

Astra shook her head. “I told you. It is something rare and ancient. That is why such dispensations are made when one encounters another.”

Maggie drank her coffee quietly, turning over in her head everything Astra had said. “If what you say is true,” she said at length, “then maybe there’s nothing you two can do about what you feel.”

Astra gave her a pained look.

“I mean, you know… if you ‘see’ her and she ‘sees’ you, whatever that means.” It was hard to keep the sardonic edge from her voice.

“You do not need to tell me that I must stay away from her,” Astra promised.

“No kidding. If I needed to do that, she wouldn’t be my girlfriend,” Maggie countered.

“But there is something you must understand, Maggie.”

“I understand plenty.”

“I respect what you share. You and she belong with each other.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because, Maggie. I see you, too.”

 


	9. Chapter 9

Astra waited for Maggie to understand what she was saying.  Maggie had been careful from the moment they had met, but the more Astra looked, the more it was clear to her.  Alex had found another  _ kothirim _ in Maggie.  Her light was unmistakable.

Astra had not yet mastered sarcasm, but she was sure that Maggie was not accepting what she was trying to convey.  “So,”  Maggie said slowly, “let me make sure I’ve got this.  I’m also a  _ kothirim _ ?”

Astra nodded.  “It took me some time to see you.  But now I do.”  She had been too weak, too cloudy at first.  Too willing to believe that she had rights with Alex.  But now, she stood here facing Maggie Sawyer, and it was plain as daylight.  

Maggie shook her head.  “That’s pretty ballsy, Astra.  I mean, I’m not here to be a third wheel for you to have a thing with Alex.  No matter how fine you are.”  She looked Astra up and down in a way that suggested she thought Astra to be very fine.  “You’re not going to be claiming any rights with this warrior spirit, ok?”

Astra put her fingers to her temples.  This was going badly.  “You do not understand.  Had Alex not killed me, I would have given myself to her.  But that was not our fate.  I am not supposed to be here.  But you also have that light.  And you were able to free her from her…”  She searched for the curious term Maggie had used.  “...her closet.  I was not.   What you share is sacred.  I cannot damage it.”

Maggie shook her head.  “Well, look.  You’ve already done that.  And … it’s not your fault, I guess.  You didn’t ask to be brought back from the dead.  But I don’t really know what to do with this.  I know you forgave her, but she’s still suffering the guilt of having killed you.  So I don’t feel right asking her to stay away from you.  But I’m not going to just stand around while you two fall in love either.”

Astra’s brow furrowed.  “Do what you must, Maggie Sawyer.  I will not be a problem for you anymore.  I will stay away from both of you.  You have my word.”

Maggie shook her head.  She stepped closer to Astra, her eyes filled with something hot and primal.  Astra suppressed a shiver.  “You may not intend to be a problem,” she said quietly.  “I just don’t know how much control you have over that.”

Astra lifted her hand, and laid a finger on Maggie’s chin.  “Maggie, you are brave, and good.”  She marveled at how Maggie did not flinch from her hand.  She withdrew then, and lowered her eyes, and dipped her head in respect to the tiny human.  “The fire in me celebrates the one in you,” she said.  “Tell me what you would have me do.”

Maggie shook her head.  “Nothing,”  she said.  “But I know what I need to do.”  She briefly patted down her pockets to make sure she was not leaving anything, and Astra felt the weight of her gaze for a long moment before she spoke again.  “Thank you for talking to me, Astra.  You’ve been... honorable.”

Maggie left.  Astra collapsed on her bed, her hands trembling.  Now there were two.  How would she ever pull herself away from this place?     
  
  


************

  
  


The man-boy Winn was pleased with his handiwork.  He unveiled the suit that he had been making for her in secret.  She was glad to have something to distract her from Maggie’s visit and the thorny possibilities it had raised.  

“So?”  The suit was blue and green, in a material that looked like the scales of a reptile and that shifted in hue depending upon how the light struck it.  Her tastes ran to the practical, but she had to admit it was beautiful.  The crest of her house was emblazoned on the chest in a muted silver.  Thankfully, he had not added a skirt as he had done with Kara’s; that frivolity suited her niece but would have been absurd for her.  She nodded in approval.  She had only one complaint.  “I do not want a cape.”

He looked disappointed.  He made a timid case for the cape and the ways in which Kara had used the features he’d added to hers.  She shook her head.  “I do not want a cape. Despite your arguments, it is not aerodynamic and affords too many opportunities to cause trouble.”

Winn nodded, clearly not prepared to go to the mat for anything because he was still afraid of her.

“And… I must ask you something.”

“What’s that?”

“Have you spoken of this arrangement to anyone?”

He shook his head.  “You told me not to.  I tend to listen to instructions from people who can break me in half with their pinky and then set the corpse on fire with their eyeballs.”

“Good.  Then I must ask you to remove the crest from the chest.  It is well-made, but it will identify me to my niece and others who know us well.  I do not wish for her to know that I am doing this.”

Winn grumbled something about everyone needing to go play superhero without telling Kara, but Astra let it go.  

“And, I suppose … you may help me choose a name.”

Winn bounced excitedly.  “Yes!”  He fumbled in his pockets and pulled out a small notepad with a bunch of scribble on it.  “I started writing some down in case you decided to let me help you.  Of course, we gotta talk about what you think you’re gonna be doing because originally I thought you were gonna be helping Kara with her stuff and now you’re going to be doing some super secret thing, so…”

She waited until he stopped yammering.  After a pause, she answered, “I am saving Earth.”

Winn tilted his head and looked at her uncomfortably.  “Well… okay, that’s … that’s a little… broad, so … could you narrow it down?  I mean, uh … you’re like, really into, uh… ecological issues, right?”

She nodded.  “I am.  But if you suggest Eco-Girl, I will break you in half with my pinky.”

Winn trembled for a moment, then stared at her.  “Oh,” he realized after a moment of sheer terror.  “Oh, that was a joke.  Ha.  Okay, a joke.  Sure.”  He scratched his head.  “Well, you could be, uh.... The Green–”

“No.”

“O...kay…”  Winn stuffed the list back in his pocket.  “Uh… Star...Something?”

Astra nodded.  “That is an acceptable start.”

“Starlady-”

“No.”

“Star Killer-”

“My planet exploded, man-boy.”

He twitched with displeasure at being addressed thusly.  “Right.  Sorry.  Star… Starfall?”  He looked at her hopefully.  “Cause y’know…. You fell from the-”

“Yes I understand,” she interrupted.  “I do not hate it.”  She chewed it over for a few moments more.  “Yes.  It will suffice.”

She still had little in the way of a plan.  She hoped that by the time he made his changes to the suit, she would have sorted herself out a bit more.  All she knew for certain was that she was looking for a cause to which she could devote her considerable strength.  Preferably one on the other side of the planet.


	10. Chapter 10

Alex opened the door for Maggie and let her in. They embraced, and Alex breathed her warm scent; cocoa butter, cinnamon, gun oil. Maggie felt good, reassuring. She made Alex feel steady when she didn't feel steady. And right now, after a few Jack and cokes, she didn't feel steady.

Maggie kissed her. “Jack and coke?” she inquired, and Alex saw a sadness around her lovely, dark eyes.

“Why yes,” Alex joked, “I'd love one.”

Maggie’s mouth smiled at that, but not her eyes. She guided Alex over to one of the barstools by the counter and sat her down.

“Al,” she sighed. “Al, Al, I really wish you were sober right now.”

Alex took Maggie’s hand and kissed it. “I'm fine,” she assured her. “I could sit on the Supreme Court right now.”

Maggie shook her head. “As a judge,” she laughed softly. “I get it.” Why did she look so sad?

Alex smiled.

“Look, I … I went to see Astra today.”

The smile froze on Alex’s face. “Why?”

Maggie sighed. “I just… I needed to make sense of what it was between you two. You have a hard time talking about it. I know enough about Astra to know that she would be honest with me, and she was.”

Alex shifted on the stool, rubbed the back of her neck, leaned back against the counter. “What… what did she say to you?”

Maggie sighed heavily. “A lot of crazy shit, to be honest. I don’t know how clearly she explained all that warrior spirit stuff to you, but… well, it’s part of her religion or whatever. She really believes it. And man, she is really hung up on you.”

Alex bit her lip but didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “Maggie, I told you–”

Maggie put a hand on Alex’s chest. She was warm. God, her hand was so warm. “Listen. Now, I mean, I dunno, she said I’m one of these warrior soulmate whatever things, too. But… but she offered to stay away from you, out of respect for us.”

Alex felt a rising panic in her chest. She couldn’t lose Astra again, not after all this. “What… what did you say?”

“I told her she didn’t need to do that.”

Alex breathed a sigh of relief.

“Here’s the thing, Al.” Maggie was gripping her shoulders now, looking at her with wide, wet eyes. “I don’t know how much you buy into that warrior soulmate business, but… you haven’t let go of her. There’s always gonna be a part of you that will wonder, was she sent back here to be with you? Shit, maybe she was. I don’t know. I don’t have a rule book for this kind of thing.”

Alex started to shake her head. She could see where Maggie was going. “No no no no… Maggie…”

“I love you, Alex. So much.” Maggie, Maggie you’re so beautiful when you say those words to me, Alex thought. “But… I can’t be with someone who’s gonna always be wondering about whether she ought to be with someone else.”

Alex felt her chin trembling. Damnit, she wasn’t going to cry. “Maggie, I can’t lose you,” she gasped. “Please, don’t…”

Maggie shook her head. She was luminous in Alex’s gaze, haloed in the tears that were welling up in her eyes. “Look, you need to know. And if it’s a disaster, you need to know that too. And you know, maybe if you’re still alive on the other side of it, you come back and you find me. ‘Cause if we’re meant, and we’re warrior soulmate whatevers, we’ll be there for each other.”

Alex could barely see. Her heart was clenched into a fist in her chest. “Maggie…” she whispered again. “Maggie, I love you…”

“Yeah, I know,” Maggie said raggedly, and Alex could hear the tears in her voice. “But you and I both know that if Astra went away, you’d just go after her. I don’t know if that’s love, but it’s something.” Maggie stroked Alex’s cheek. “Alex, she’s always gonna be the one that got away. Unless you don’t let her get away. And… I just can’t be around for that, okay? It’s gonna hurt too much.”

Maggie was crying now, audibly. Her voice was soaked in tears. Her breathing was ragged and she was sniffling. Alex grabbed her and drew her closer, and she was weeping too. “Maggie, please, please don’t do this.” She buried her face in Maggie’s neck, breathed her in again. “Maggie…”

“Alex…”

They wept against each other for several minutes. They ended up in bed together, making love and crying and Alex pleading for her to stay, and Maggie telling her she needed to go get answers to her questions. “I’m doing this because I love you,” she kept saying. “I want you happy.”

“I can’t be happy without you.”

But it was done. And Maggie was gone. And Alex was broken.

She called in sick the next day and then the next.

She cried, and slept, and drank, and cried, and slept. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gentle readers, the rest of this story is written. Please let me know in the comments whether you would like me to continue posting a chapter per day or whether you want the rest to binge read in one shot. :)


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So Ive decided to give you all four mini binges of three chapters apiece to take you through the weekend. So it begins. Don't be stingy with the comments. ;)

Maggie called Kara the morning after the breakup, while Alex was still asleep, to tell her what she had done.

“What? Why?”

Maggie sighed. “It’s complicated. I think she’s in love with someone else.”  
  
Kara snorted. “What? No! That’s impossible! She’s head over heels for you, Maggie!”

Maggie sighed. “Maybe. But… look, I don’t want to get into things that Alex hasn’t shared with you.” Maggie sounded weary to her own ears. “Just… look out for her. She’s in a bad way now, and she’s gonna need her sister.”

The truth was, she didn't really do it for Alex. She did it because she was afraid of getting hurt. Astra, despite her honor and her seemingly sincere intention to get out of the way, was convinced that there was something deep and powerful between herself and Alex. And Alex clearly felt it too, despite how hard she was trying to convince Maggie (and probably herself) otherwise. Even if it was all just an article of faith or straight up mental illness, Maggie knew that the intangible was the hardest to argue against. Maybe those two broken-winged birds needed each other.

She was troubled and distracted at work the next day, so much so that even a couple of the guys noticed. She almost took a swing at an intransigent witness, and Bernardi muttered, “Thought it was my turn to be bad cop, Sawyer.” This felt wrong. She and Alex loved each other. But she had to protect herself, didn't she?

She kept replaying her conversation with Astra. She kept seeing her, beautiful and sad, entreating her, “Tell me what you would have me do.” And Maggie knew that whatever she would have asked, Astra would have done it.

She remembered those words, “The fire in me celebrates the one in you.”

She remembered the way Astra had gently, briefly touched her chin. It hadn't felt like she was putting a move on, although despite herself, Maggie had felt her heartbeat stumble a little. It couldn't have been that, Astra wasn’t really fluent in the language of subtlety, flirtation, seduction… No, it had only felt like a gesture of connection. One that Maggie was hard pressed to say she didn't share, if only a little. If nothing else, they were connected by their feelings for Alex.

She understood Alex’s struggle in that moment. She saw Astra, all that raw power, made humble by the strength of what she felt for Alex. If she were on the receiving end of that, Maggie reflected, she would have a hard time letting it go too.

Maggie’s heart broke a little for her; she’d learned in her mingling with various alien cultures that love wasn’t quite as universal as humans believed, that connections could be forged and maintained in thousands of different ways and that sometimes the breadth of human romantic love wasn’t quite adequate to explain it. The longer she considered it, the more she felt that Astra’s being drawn toward Alex was something along those lines. She considered the way Astra described her bond with Non and how different it was from what she described feeling toward Alex.

 _Pulled together by something greater than themselves_ , Maggie thought. How could she hope to compete with that? She'd certainly been with her share of alien women and lived through the peculiarities of their customs for sex and mating and dating. Sometimes she struggled to love them the way they wanted to be loved, definitely, but sometimes she got caught up in experiencing it their way. It was just sex, but for Astra, it seemed there was no “just sex” and, although it was for different reasons, there wasn't really any such thing for Alex either.

  
**************

  
“Six ball, corner pocket, and that four in the side pocket,” M’gann decided after a moment of staring down her cue.

“You’ve gotta be frickin’ kidding me,” Maggie groaned. No human could make that shot. M’gann always kicked her ass at pool.

“Nope.” M’gann made her shot, and on command, the white ball punched forward, bounced off the four, knocked it into the side pocket, and then struck the six and sent it rolling into the corner pocket, clearing the table. She straightened up, smiling.

“Damn you Martians and your advanced understanding of physics,” Maggie joked.

M’gann chuckled. “Lucky for you we weren’t playing for money.”

Maggie smiled. “Another game?”

M’gann shook her head. “Why don’t we have something to drink and you can tell me what happened with you and Alex like you’ve been dying to do all night.”

Maggie rolled her eyes. “That obvious, huh?”

“I’m a bartender,” M’gann chided. “What do you think?”

They went and got a couple of pints of bitter from the bar and slid into a booth. Maggie began explaining everything that had transpired since Astra had punched a giant hole in the wall of the bar.

M’gann tsked. “I knew that bitch was trouble as soon as I laid eyes on her.”

Maggie laughed. “Come on. You do realize you have a slight bias on account of her bashing a hole in the wall.”

“That’s not a bias, that’s just an observation of fact. She literally came crashing into your lives.”

Maggie conceded her point. “Anyway, I just … staying didn’t feel like the right thing. But now I’ve left and that doesn’t feel like the right thing either.”

M’gann screwed up her mouth in thought for a few minutes. “I don’t know what to tell you, Maggie. I don’t know about that warrior spirit stuff, but those Kryptonians were always a little religious, in spite of all that science and genetic engineering. There was always a little of that… what do you call it? Woo-woo? I mean… if you didn’t want to leave and you didn’t want to stay and force Alex to stop talking to her, there’s always a ....third option.”

Maggie scoffed, smiling wryly. “Yeah, don’t think it didn’t cross my mind.”

“Of course it did, you filthy human.”

They laughed. Maggie collected herself. “But look -- I mean, I’ve done that before, you know, three-ways.”

“Color me green with surprise.”

“But it was different. It was just sex. It was having a good time. But, a whole relationship thing … I just don’t know if I’m wired for that, and to be honest, I don’t know whether the two of them are either.”

M’gann shrugged. “You said you thought Astra, and I quote, was fine as hell.”

“She is!”

“So?”

Maggie frowned at her.

M’gann laughed again. “Look, I’m just playing with you. Honestly, I mean… Alex is a babe in the woods, to hear you tell it, and Astra… How do I put this? Kara is maybe the only Kryptonian I’ve ever met who didn’t have a giant stick up their ass.”

“You’re saying you don’t think it’s a real option.”

M’gann shrugged. “I don’t know. But it doesn’t sound like it is for you, so it’s all academic, right?”

Maggie shook her head. “I guess.”

She went home, wanting to call Alex to say goodnight and knowing she shouldn’t.

She considered the idea that you did learn a fair amount about someone by what sort of a fighter they were. Did they have honor, were they resourceful, did they fight their way through pain and adversity? Were they clever, did they care for those around them, were they reckless, were they strategic? Were they brutal? Did they have the stomach for the hard parts of the job? She thought of how working with Alex was what made her fall in love with her; her intelligence, her toughness, her righteousness, her courage. She wondered whether this whole kothirim business was just Kryptonians making that into some sort of a spiritual thing.

Maggie called Kara’s place, looking for Astra, but Kara told her she wasn’t around. She wanted to talk to Astra again. She wanted to understand why she had felt that little stir in her chest when Astra had touched her. She wanted to understand more about all of this. She was disappointed. She asked Kara to have Astra call her when she got in.

Astra never called.

 


	12. Chapter 12

Astra nearly dropped the mug she was drinking coffee from. “What?” she demanded, horrified.

“I know,” Kara sighed. “I couldn’t believe it either. Maggie didn’t really want to explain everything, so I don’t even know exactly why. She said she thinks Alex is in love with someone else, but I can’t imagine who! She’s completely gaga over Maggie.”

Astra didn’t know exactly what “gaga” meant but she got the idea, and she felt a pang of guilt. She had tried to make sure that Maggie understood, she would remove herself from their lives. But still, it must not have been enough. She could not tell Kara the truth of things. She would not understand.

“Anyway,” Kara sighed, putting on her sneakers, “I’m going over there now to watch TV and try to cheer her up with something besides alcohol.”

“Alcohol?”

“Yeah. You know, like–” And then her little one rattled off an impressive list of inebriants from various parts of the galaxy.

“How do you know all these?” she demanded. She did not like to think that her niece was imbibing too much.

Kara laughed. “Come on, Astra, I hang out at an alien bar. Or I did until you broke it.”

“How many times must I apologize for that?”

Kara gave her an impish little smirk.

Astra muttered a mild oath under her breath.

“I heard that. Anyway,” Kara went on, “just because I know what they are, doesn’t mean I drink all of them. Alex, on the other hand…” She trailed off. “I don’t think she has a problem, exactly, but I kinda wish she drank a little less. I think it’s been better since she’s been with Maggie. But I’m a little worried about where that’s going to go now.” A shadow passed over Kara’s face as she said this.

Astra frowned, but didn’t speak.

“Anyway, I’m going over there. Do you want to come? Maybe she’d like to see you.”

Astra shook her head. “I do not think that would be appropriate.”

Kara looked at her for a moment, then nodded. “Alright. I’ll probably stay over. Don’t wait up for me.”

As Kara was leaving, a word stuck in Astra’s brain from her conversation with Maggie, suddenly, and she called to her niece, “Kara?”

Kara stopped. “Hm?”

“What is fucking?”

Had Kara been drinking, she’d have spit it all over herself. She flushed and mumbled something about sex, and excused herself to go see Alex.

Astra wanted nothing more than to go to Alexandra right now and be with her, or go to Maggie and demand to know why she had done this foolish thing. But she had given her word that she would stay away and so she was stuck in the house, pacing the floor, using the Google on her niece’s primitive computer to look up things about humpback whales, Patrick Henry, the polar ice caps and what in Rao’s name a Kardashian was (she was unimpressed). This quickly declined into her eating two entire cardboard containers of ice cream and flicking through everything she could find about Alex and Maggie.

  
*******************

  
The next night she found herself alone again. Kara was out on some DEO operation. Astra had more time to think about things.

She would keep her word. She would leave National City. She would go save Earth somewhere else. The city didn’t need two Kryptonian superheroes.

It occurred to her that she had been afraid to attempt flight in any serious way since she'd returned. Part of her kept remembering her unexplained fainting spell when she first saw Alexandra. Nevertheless, after a few quick floats around the living room, she climbed out of the window in her jeans and motorcycle jacket (it had been a gift from Maggie, it pained her to wear it but she was perhaps overfond of it), and gently pushed off into the stark, glittering night.

The trip was exhilarating. She had forgotten how it felt to be held aloft on nothing and shooting across the sky. The freedom of it. The miracle of it. She had been so singularly focused on her mission before she died, she had not had time to dwell in the joy of it.

She ended up at Alex’s apartment. She remembered the way from when she had gone to visit her before. She did not think Alex would appreciate her entering by the window, so she knocked on the door. She was only coming to say goodbye, she told herself.

“Who is it?” Alex called from within.

“Astra.”

A long pause ensued. Finally, she heard Alex’s footsteps, and then the door swung open. Alex stood, looking exhausted, in clothes that she most likely slept in. This was all wrong. She should not be so sad. “Alex,” she whispered. “I am so sorry for this.”

Alex shook her head. “It’s not your fault.” She stood aside. “Please, come in.”

Astra entered. She’d rearranged a few things, she thought. The space didn’t feel quite the same. She couldn’t place what, though.

They stood together in the kitchen. It was, Astra realized, the first time that she’d been alone with Alex since she’d returned. “I told Maggie I would leave you both alone. Why did she separate from you?”

Alex’s eyes welled up only a little. She wiped one with the end of a sleeve. “First of all, you shouldn't have done that without talking to me. I'm not some damsel that you two are fighting over.”

“It was not a fight,” Astra protested. “I only wanted to honor your bond. As I told Maggie… I am not supposed to be here.”

Alex reached out and took Astra’s wrists, and the fire flickered in her eyes. “There is no supposed to! There is only the world that is. The world we've got. And this is a world where you're alive and I have to deal with that. We all do.”

Astra was hyper-aware of Alexandra's hands on her wrists, the tightness of her grip, the pulse in her fingertips, the scent of her hand lotion, something with delicate flowers. “But nevertheless, I do not understand why she ended things with you.”

“She said it didn’t matter what you did, that the problem was really how I felt.”

Astra hesitated for a moment, then asked. “How does she think you feel?”

Alex shook her head. Astra found herself lost in that gaze, those dark eyes. “She thinks I still want you.”

Astra closed her eyes. Not sure she wanted to hear the answer, Astra nonetheless asked, “Do you?”

Alex stared at her, her eyes wide. “Yes,” she whispered. “God, yes.”

Astra remained still, in her mind still trying to keep some shred of her word to Maggie. But Alex’s look was hungry and her touch persistent, and Astra's will was failing her. Alex’s hands slid up Astra’s arms, gripped her shoulders. “I promised Maggie—”

“She left,” Alex whispered harshly. Her body was closer now, Astra could feel it's warmth. Astra cracked. She snaked her arms around Alex’s waist and pulled her tightly against her. She was as soft as Astra remembered, but with a muscled back, firm shoulders, sharp teeth, hard kisses. Such hard, hungry kisses. They eclipsed her memories, made them pale as ghosts. She was here, in her own body, burning new memories into her brain with her Alexandra.

She shoved something out of the way, heard it break, didn't care. They were both caught in a bonfire of their own making. “Alexandra,” she breathed, pressing her against the refrigerator. Alex’s fingers tangled in her hair, pulling at it. Yes, she thought, yes. Astra grasped at Alex’s shirt and with a loud ripping sound, tore it off her, anxious to feel her.

Alex gripped her face. “Wait,” she whispered. “Astra, wait.”

Astra had to breathe deeply a few times to pull herself back.

“My human,” she whispered.

“Astra, I …” Alex gazed up into her eyes. “I want it to be different than before.”

Astra stroked her cheek. “What is it that you want?”

“I needed it to hurt, then. I don't need that now.” Alex slid out from between Astra’s body and the refrigerator, and took her hand. “Come with me,” she said, and led her to the bed.

Astra’s body was aching and even Alex’s hand in hers was filling her with urgent need.

Without a word, Alex unzipped Astra’s jacket, and tugged her shirt up over her head. With gentle hands, she undid the zipper on Astra’s jeans and slid them down. She sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at her, her eyes quenching their thirst on Astra’s body. “I wanted to look at you before,” she said, tracing her fingers up Astra’s thighs, hips, waist. “I wanted to, but I was too afraid. You're … You're Incredible.”

Astra shuddered under Alex’s gentle touch. So soft, so sweet. “Alexandra.” She was wet with desire already. She could smell that Alexandra was too. Her heartbeat echoed in Astra’s ears.

“Lie down with me,” Alex whispered. As Astra lowered herself into the bed, Alex slipped out of the rest of her clothing. Her eyes shone with invitation. She didn't want to fight her desires. Astra’s soul cried out with joy. Alexandra had never looked at her this way before, with such unabashed lust.

Astra sighed, and kissed her again, softly.

Alex laid her down, kissed her mouth, and whispered, “I'm going to give you what I never gave you.” Astra’s body was thrumming with electricity. “What I wasn't brave enough to give you then.”

Astra closed her eyes. She felt her skin, felt the length of Alex’s body laid against hers, for the first time. All that sex, that hot, hurried, closet sex, had only left her hungry for this, for her Alexandra naked against her. She felt Alex’s mouth working softly down her neck, kissing her collarbones. She stopped at the pale scar in the middle of Astra’s chest, that faint evidence of the wound that she'd made. She spent several minutes there, kissing it and quietly shedding tears as if those things would make it fade away. Astra stroked her hair, promised her that her heart was mended now, that there were no more apologies to make for that wound.

She moved on, licking and kissing her breasts, gently sucking on her taut nipples. Astra arched into her mouth, sighing her name again. She was passionate, her human; she was intense, but sweet, her mouth sensitive to the tides and ripples of heat she was causing. Alex was murmuring things as she worked down Astra’s body, telling her how beautiful she was, how badly she wanted to do this.

“Will you make your body mine tonight?” Alex asked. _The words,_ Astra thought, and her heart thrilled. _She remembers the words._

“Yes,” Astra moaned. “Yes.”

“The fire in me celebrates the one in you,” Alex whispered, kissing Astra’s stomach. Those words were the ones Astra had used when she took Alex those times before. She remembered. _She remembered._

Astra felt tears form in her eyes for the first time in a long time. “Alexandra,” she sighed. “My body is yours.”

And Alex moved down, and with the same gentle sense of purpose, pushed Astra’s thighs apart, and tasted her. It was a supernova between her legs, a beautiful collapse brought on by Alex’s hot, tender kisses. “Astra,” she murmured in between her kisses, “Astra, do you know how much I wanted this?”

“Yes.”

“I said I didn't want you but it wasn't true.”

“I know. I knew then.”

“This was what I wanted.”

“You wanted my surrender.”

“Yes.”

“You have it.” How sweet it was, surrendering. She could not have known.

Astra forgot words then, and felt nothing but Alex’s mouth, and could hear nothing but Alex’s breathing, and she climaxed, tears spilling from the corners of her eyes, and could think nothing but _Alexandra, Alexandra, Alexandra._


	13. Chapter 13

Alex fell asleep beside Astra, exhausted, her heart overfull. She still ached at Maggie’s absence. She missed the way that Maggie held her, kissed the back of her neck, whispered sweet, dirty things in the middle of the night.

But she had had Astra in her bed. She had tasted her. She had felt her give herself. It was everything she had thought it would be. Everything she hadn't let herself admit she wanted it to be. She had fallen asleep soothed. She had eased a hurt that she’d been carrying so long, she’d forgotten what it was like to not hurt that way.

But where was Astra now? The bed was empty. She did her best to shake off her hangover and looked around. She hadn't dreamt it, had she? It had sure felt real. She listened for a moment, but didn't detect any sounds of anyone else shuffling around in the apartment.

She got up, shimmied into some sweatpants and a tank top, and shuffled out to the kitchen to make some coffee. That was another thing she missed. Maggie made really good coffee. She'd never tell Alex what her trick was.

Her laptop was sitting open on the counter. The word processing app was open. A note was typed on it:

_Alexandra,_

_I gave my word that I would not come between you and Maggie, but now I have done that. You miss her, and it was not my right to offer myself to you in your loneliness and pain. I have betrayed my own honor, and it shames me to think it._

_I do not know why our fate is a tangle of desire and shame, it seems no matter the circumstance, we cannot manage to be together as Rao made us, nor are we successful in staying apart._

_I am sorry, my warrior spirit, that I did not stay. I cannot forgive what I have done. I will find somewhere else to be, and stay away, so that you can mend things with Maggie. She is a light, as you are a light. I am an aberration, and have no right to stand between you, nor force a choice upon you._

“Goddamnit, Astra,” she whispered as she read the note over and over. “You don’t want to force a choice on me, so you just made one for me!”

It was time to get everything in the open. She wasn’t about to let shame be an excuse for Astra to run away. Alex was angry at everything and everyone and ready to fight the world, but this one? This one would be easy. She was too mad to feel ashamed about anything anymore. She called Kara.

“Hey, Alex, are you okay?”

“Is Astra with you?”

A confused pause. “What? No… no, she… I haven’t seen her since yesterday, actually. I don’t know where she is.”

“Okay, well, I saw her last night.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. She stayed here.”

“Oh. Why… why did she stay there?”

Alex took a deep breath and released it. “Kara, there are things I didn’t tell you before, about Astra, and why I took it so hard when I… when she died”

Another bewildered pause, this one crackling with suspicion. “Okay…”

“Look, you know that Kryptonian legend about Kel-Lo and Rana?”

“Yeah, I think so?”

“Okay, well, Astra … claimed her rights with me.”

“Oh.” Then a pause, as the information sank in and Kara slowly remembered that legend and what it meant that Astra had claimed her rights. “OH. WOW. OKAY.”

“Yeah.” Alex took another deep breath. “We… it happened … a bunch of times, actually.”

  
“Okay, I don’t know how much detail I really need, here…”

“No no no!” Alex answered sharply. “Look, half the reason that I’ve been a closet case and a drunk is because the first time I met a woman who really lit me on fire, I had to be ashamed of it because not only was she the enemy, but she was my little sister’s aunt! Do you understand how hard it’s been to not deal with you about this? Especially since she’s come back?”

Kara cleared her throat. “Well… Alex .... I’m… I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have wanted that. I would have … I mean… I’m not going to lie, it’s a little weird for me. Technically, you two aren’t related and stuff, so it’s fine, but… it’s going to take me a minute to absorb this one. Still, I wish you would have given me more credit. I wish Astra would have given me more credit.”

“Astra still thinks of you as a twelve year old,” Alex retorted. “Of course she’s ashamed to tell you.”

“You’re right,” Kara admitted. “But I wish I had known. For both of your sakes. For all our sakes, really.”

“Anyway, look. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I… Maggie and I had been struggling ever since Astra came back. Astra was always this big unresolved question in my life. Maggie called her ‘the one that got away’, but she’s right. That’s what she is. It wasn't just sex.”

“I know,” Kara answered, her voice small. “I know what it means to have that connection with someone.”

“Did you, ever?”

Kara sighed. “No. But, I don't think I’m _kothirim_. I never did. I wasn't born a warrior. I became one out of necessity.”

Alex pondered that for a moment. Without her powers, would Kara ever have become a fighter? It hadn't occurred to Alex to wonder before now.

“Anyway, Maggie walked, because she didn’t want to be with me if I was still pining for Astra. And Astra, with her goddamn honor, showed up here last night, spent the night with me–”

“More information than I want.”

“Sorry, but she was here, and then she fucked off sometime in the wee hours, leaving me this goddamn maudlin note about how she swore to Maggie that she’d stay away and she’s leaving National City so that Maggie and I can get back together.”

Kara cleared her throat. “Okay, well, uh… I’m glad I know the whole truth? I, uh… don’t know if I can help you. I don’t know where she went.”

Alex sighed irritably. “I don’t need you to do anything. We have this gravity between us, I’m sure she’s not going to be gone for very long. I’m just telling you because I can’t stand this anymore. I’m sick of my relationship with Astra being a deep, dark secret. It’s weird, I can’t explain it, it’s completely different than what I have with … had, with Maggie… but it is what it is. I’m putting this into the daylight and taking the ...shame-stank off of it.”

“Well, you _shouldn’t_ be ashamed.”

“I know. I’m just kind of realizing that. I can’t begin to make rational choices about this until everything has some sunlight on it and I really know what it all looks like.”

Another silence, this time long enough that Alex was just about to ask if they were still connected. “Alex,” Kara said quietly, “I love you. I didn't know what you’d lost. Whatever I can do for you, I want to help.”

Alex sighed. “Like I said, the only thing I need from you is to be my sister and best friend. And if Astra comes around, tell her you know everything. Tell her you don’t care. I’ve just about had it with all of this.”

  
************************

It was Saturday, so Alex next pulled herself together, drank several cups of coffee, took several Advil, and went to knock on Maggie’s door. On a Saturday morning, she’d probably be still be in, lounging in flannel pajama pants, watching the local news and cleaning and oiling her Glock. They liked doing sidearm maintenance together. It was, strangely, a very married, romantic sort of thing. _Babe, pass me the Gun Scrub. Yeah, sure. Can I borrow that baby toothbrush for a second? Only if you kiss me first._

Anyway. No point getting overly sentimental about that, she thought. She pounded on the door until Maggie came shuffling out and opened it. They stood looking at each other for a few moments. It was the first time they’d seen each other since Maggie had broken up with her.

Maggie spoke first. “You look like who did it and ran.” It was clearly meant to be a joke, but it was poorly timed and there was too much truth to it, probably.

Alex gave her a pinched smile. “Yeah, thanks. You look great, actually.” She glanced down. “Are those my pajama pants?”

Maggie’s brows knit together in a pained look. “Yeah. Probably you still have some of my things, too.”

Alex nodded. “Probably so.”

Another uncomfortable pause. Alex could hear the squawk of the local news in the background. “So, uh… what… what’s up?”

Alex put her hands on her hips. “You want to know what’s up? What’s up is that I’ve had it with both of your shit.”

Maggie gave her a bemused look. “I’m sorry, what?”

“You heard me. I’ve had it with both of you. So, you’re going to let me in, and we’re going to talk about this now.”

“Al, I … I have to …”

“No. Now.”

Maggie sighed and acquiesced. Alex stepped inside the door, and it closed behind her with a slam.

 


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here is the first chapter of your second mini-binge. Enjoy! :)

Alex seemed agitated.  Her cheeks were flushed, and even the bridge of her nose was a little pink underneath that smattering of freckles that Maggie loved.  She wondered if this was going to be the Angry Stage of Alex’s five stages of grief.  But that didn’t seem like it was exactly it.

“Okay, Al,” she said calmly.  “You want to talk?  Let’s talk.”

Alex tossed her jacket over the back of the couch, and perched herself on the arm, clearly too restless to sit on it normally.  “I’ve had it with you and Astra, both of you.  You two have been working so hard to stay out of each other’s way and be honorable and blah blah blah, but you never fucking asked me what I want!  Neither one of you!  You both just make decisions without me about what’s going on in the relationship that I am supposedly at the unfortunate apex of.”

Maggie couldn’t school the surprise off of her face.  She muted the television.

“You’re both trying to be white knights or maybe you’re just scared and only thinking about yourselves, or what, I don’t know.  You didn’t give me a choice about whether to end us.  And you know what?  Astra pulled the same shit!  She came by last night and then decided to pull a disappearing act.  Kara has no idea where she is.  She just left me this sorry letter about how she’ll get out of the way so that you and I can get back together.  Why is it that both of you love me so much, but you can’t manage to actually involve me in what goes on?”

Maggie, stunned at the torrent that just came out of Alex in what seemed like one continuous breath, plopped down into the chair across from the couch.  “Wow.  Okay.”  

“I’m going to need a little more than that,” Alex said crossly.

Maggie thought for a moment.  She held up a hand.  “Okay, I’m sorry.  I’m trying to hear you, I just need a minute to process everything you just said.”  She took a few breaths.  Maggie realized that while she couldn’t speak for Astra, that she knew damn well that she was trying to head off her own fear of getting hurt.  She might as well admit that.  “Look, I… I think you’re right.  I don’t know what Astra’s deal is, I know she’s got all this religious stuff that affects her thinking on this, and arcane ideas about honor and stuff.  But I know that… you’re right.  I was only thinking about myself.  I was afraid you were going to choose her over me, and I wanted to just… avoid the pain by getting out first.”

Alex shook her head.  “You know how dumb that is, right?”

Maggie started to protest.  

“No, don’t try to argue, you don’t have a point,” Alex interrupted her.  “Look.  None of us asked to be in this situation, but we are all in it.  You, me  _ and _ Astra.  And we aren’t going to come to any decision about this that’s going to make any sense unless we sit down and talk about it together.”  Alex’s chest was heaving a little.  She was breathing hard.  It was like a switch had flipped.

“So… What  _ do _ you want?”  Maggie ventured after a long minute.

“I don't know,” Alex admitted, “but that doesn't mean you get to decide things without making me part of the decision process .”

Maggie sat and considered her for a moment.  “Did you sleep with her last night?”

Alex folded her arms.  “Really?”

Maggie nodded.  “Really.  I think it’s fair.  If you want to work this out together, then everything has to be on the table.  Did you sleep with her last night?”

Alex hesitated, then answered, “Yes.  She showed up at my place, I let her in, and we talked a little and then, yes.  We slept together.  And yeah, I was a little drunk, but it probably would have happened even if I wasn't .”  She inspected Maggie’s face for a moment.  “Are you upset?”

Maggie asked herself the same question.  She’d ended it, after all.  What did she expect her to do?  “I don’t know how I feel,” she answered honestly.  “I… don’t have a real right to feel any kind of way about it, because I broke up with you so that you could have that.  It does hurt a little, but… that’s not your problem, really.”

Alex shook her head.  “No.  No, no, no.  It is my problem.  It’s everyone’s problem now.  We… WE… are going to work through this.  No more of this stuff with you two idiots deciding for me what’s going to happen to me and my life.  I know I have problems, I know I’m… whatever, a little bit of work, if you want to call it that.  But I’m not a child and I’m not a damsel and I'm not a trophy.”

Maggie looked at Alex for a long time.  They didn’t speak.  She just listened to the hum of the refrigerator in the next room and the gurgle of her plumbing and the sound of her own breathing (why was it so loud?).  She nodded slowly.  “Alright.  I think it makes sense.  But, there’s something I want from you, too.”

“Okay.”

She looked Alex dead in the eye.  “I want you to get help.  I want you to go into rehab, and get therapy, and stop drinking.  You have a problem, Alex.  I’m not the only one who’s worried about it, either.  If you want to do this kind of work, I’m here for it.  If you want to make you, me and Astra a problem that we solve together, the three of us, I’m willing.  But I’m not investing myself in that process, I’m not risking that, with a drunk.”

“I’m not a–”   


“Alex, you were at the bar in the middle of the afternoon when Astra showed up.”

“It doesn’t slow me down–”

“Yeah, um, no.  That means you drink so much, that you almost function better that way.  That’s a problem.”  She got up and moved closer to Alex.  “Al, I love you, I never stopped.  But I’ve put it all on the line before for a girl with a drinking problem and I got burned, bad.  You go into rehab and straighten your shit out, or no deal.”

Alex stared her down for a moment.  The seconds dripped by like water from a broken tap.  “Alright.  Fine.  I’ll go.  And when I come out, we’re going to figure this out.”

Maggie sighed, and tentatively placed a hand on Alex’s shoulder.  She wanted to pull her close, but wasn’t sure if she was allowed.  Alex looked at her, and yanked her into a rough embrace.  “We’re going to do this,”  Maggie promised her, squeezing Alex and resting her chin on Alex’s shoulder.  Her eyes closed, and she let go a long sigh of relief.  It was good to be close to her again.  It felt wrong, not being able to have that.

Alex disengaged after a moment.  Her face was still serious, but her demeanor seemed lighter.  She started putting her jacket back on.  “Alright.  So, I’m going to go home, and, uh… pack my shit, I guess.  And I guess you’d better give Astra the heads up about what’s going on.”

“But,” Maggie protested, “we don’t know where she is.”

Alex popped her collar and walked toward the door.  She stopped and turned to Maggie, and gave her an ironic little smile.  “You’re a detective, Sawyer.  Detect.”

 


	15. Chapter 15

Winn wasn’t going to finish everything.  He’d removed the crest of Astra’s house from the chest of the suit, but it still had the cape.  She wasn’t happy, but she couldn’t wait.  She had a mission.  A pressing one.  

It would be a relief to leave National City and go make herself useful elsewhere.  It would help her forget the pull of these two humans, these twin stars that burned in her belly.  

She had seen Maggie.  She would have to try to unsee her.

And as for Alex… well, that felt as if it had been going on since the beginning of time.  She was filled with regret for the letter that she had left Alexandra after their night together, the night that she had wanted so badly since the first, but she knew that if she didn’t leave at that moment, that she wasn’t going to, and she knew she was supposed to get out of the way.

She shot into the sky, shimmering like the blue/green surface of the Earth itself, cape fluttering behind her.  She was dubious that she would make use of its features, but she found a certain pleasure in the snapping sounds it made in the high velocity wind as she streaked up the coast toward Canada.  It was still impractical.  She could always go back later and have him remove it, she supposed.

She saw the column of smoke from far in the distance, poking a thick black finger up into the icy blue sky above the North Pacific.  She had seen it on the television as she waited for Winn to call and tell her that she could come pick up the suit.  When she saw it, she knew that this would be her first act as Starfall.  

The giant oil rig was semi-submersible and could drill deep.  Too deep.  It had suffered an explosion that had killed a dozen men and now, the well was bleeding into the ocean, thousands and thousands of gallons of oil, and drilling mud, and methane gas.  She had come to understand that humans did not truly need this oil.  They had other means of producing energy, but their political systems were paralyzed by various interests, and were doing what they could to slow the passing of the age of fossil fuels.  It was not so different from Krypton, after all.

She would first plug the leak.  With her hands, she would tear the giant pipe protruding from the ocean floor and press its edges closed.  It was difficult to see with the inky clouds of crude oil and mud that billowed from the jagged mouth where the explosion had torn it open.  The taste of it singed at the back of her throat and she ignored it, focused only on her task.  Rolling, and crushing, rolling and crushing the pipe until it was folded over like a piece of grotesque origami.  The clouds of black slowly ebbed away until it no longer leaked.  She shot up through the ocean’s blue-black depths, and exploded from the surface of the water in a shining spray, lifting herself to inspect the condition of the rig itself.

The men on it were running back and forth and shouting, pointing at her, while some of the crew were still trying to put out what would have been an inextinguishable fire if she had not arrived when she did.  Other small fires smoldered at other places on the upper platforms.  She moved herself around to the side where the largest fire raged.  “Move aside!” she called to them.  They laid down their various tools and methods for extinguishing the fire, which were not serving them, and she blew an icy blast of air to put the fire out.  It took several minutes, as it was a stubborn flame, fueled as it was from the remainder of what was in the pipe.  But she did it, and then extinguished the other smaller fires, besides.  She flew through the scaffolds of the lower level of the rig, blowing her freezing breath on all the big and small conflagrations.

Occasionally, because she was covered with oil herself, her suit would catch fire.  Though both she and the suit were fireproof, the humans were not, and besides that, it was an annoyance to have a bit of her clothing on fire, so she would plunge into the water for a moment with a burst of white foam and reappear a moment later, no longer burning.  By the time the rescue vessels had arrived, the well was no longer leaking and the rig was still smoking, but no longer on fire.  She was peripherally aware of a television helicopter poised overhead, capturing her rescue efforts.  She ferried the men, two at a time, to the rescue vessels.  More than this, she decided, she would not do, today.  It was enough.

She shot up into the sky, well above where the helicopter hovered.  She slowly turned in the air, trying to decide:  what now?  She could not return to National City.  She had black oil on her suit.  And she was hot, so very hot.  It was curious, how she was impervious to temperature insofar as it did not harm her, yet still, the burning black air was still acrid in her lungs and she could still taste it in her mouth.  She felt as if the entire back of her throat had been seared over an open flame.  It did not hurt, and if there was any damage, it would not last, but still.  She was aware of it.  It was… unpleasant.  She needed to be someplace clean, someplace cold.  In the distance, she could see a shoreline.  The Canadian shoreline.  She couldn’t see them from here, but she knew that there were mountains.

Krypton had had mountains, but they weren’t like the ones she’d seen here.  Krypton’s mountains were forbidding, sharp and black against the blood-red sky.  The ones she sought now were majestic, alive with green, with peaks kissed white with ice and snow.  Ice and snow had also been hard to come by on Krypton near the end.  She needed them now.  To cool, to calm, to steady.  To ground herself in this world and spend a long moment considering what she was becoming and who she was now.

She spotted the highest one from well away, and made her way toward it.  She dropped from the sky like a falling star, and landed in the snow at the peak of the mountain, throwing up a cloud of white powder that sparkled in the sinking sun.  She had spent hours at the oil rig.  She needed this now.  She sat in the snow, and looked out over the mountains, and listened to her heartbeat, and listened to the wind, and the turning of the earth hurling itself around its star.  She listened to her breathing, felt it surge in and out with the oceans.  She felt the opening and closing of the blooming blue iris of her eyes, in rhythm with the movements of the clouds before the sun, and the pull of the tides on the blood in her veins.  

She was part of this world, now.  And it was part of her.  And so were Alex, and Maggie, even if they were not beside her now.  She knew she would miss them, that she would ache for them, but in this moment, she had something that had eluded her since she’d arrived here.

She’d found peace.


	16. Chapter 16

Alex called J’onn to tell him she was checking herself into Las Palmas Heights.  He sounded sincerely relieved.  “I know you’ve been wrestling this demon for a long time,” he said, “especially since Astra came back.”

Alex twitched at the mention of her name.  She tried playing dumb.  “What… what do you mean?  Because I killed her?”

“Yeah, and because of your feelings for her,”  he answered bluntly.

She coughed.  “You, uh, knew about that, huh?”

“Alex,” he said, a little chuckle in his voice, “walking around plastered didn’t keep her out of your thoughts.  And frankly, there were a few thoughts I could have done without overhearing.”

She reddened.  

“But I’m glad.  You need this.  Reach out if you need anything at all.”

“I think my communication is going to be pretty limited, but as much as I can, I will.”

Kara went with her to help her get checked in.  Alex looked bleakly at the run of each day;  group therapy, solo therapy, craft projects, exercise, check-in for this, check-in for that.  It was going to be a long thirty days.  But she had to do it.  For herself and everyone she loved and her career and the city and the planet.  She had to.

Before Alex was packed off to the inpatient area, Kara took her hands.  “I have one little surprise for you.”

“Oh yeah?  What’s that?”

“Well, I was able to call in some major favors and I got you a really great therapist who’s going to treat you here, onsite.”

Alex looked at her, quizzical.  “Okay…?”

Kara smiled.  “She’s the best.  She treated Cat Grant.  And … and Supergirl.  And other…”  She dropped her voice.  “Other supers, other aliens.  So, there’s nothing you can’t say in your sessions and she’s not going to think you’re crazy.”

Alex was incredulous.  She’d always avoided therapy because she figured there was no point, since any therapist was going to listen to her talk about aliens and superheroes and government black ops and have her committed instantly.  Or, she’d be lying in therapy, and what was the point of that?  “Are you serious?”

Kara nodded.  “I told you I’d do whatever I could to help you.”

Alex hugged her hard.  “Thanks, Kara.”

  
  
  


*********************

  
  


She knew she was signing up for a tough time.  She was surrounded by people who had hit rock bottom.  It took her about a week to fully come to terms with the fact that she was one of them.  She was in a place where she had to attend constant meetings, had to piss in a cup several times a day, couldn’t have access to her cell phone, and had her belongings searched on the regular.  It was pretty much as much fun as she figured it would be, which was why she hadn’t done it till now.

She met Kara’s therapist on her third day there.  She walked into one of the multi-use offices and sat on the threadbare couch, and waited.  The door swung open and an aging hippie woman with long, unruly grey hair, wearing a caftan and a necklace of chunky amber beads, walked in.  She peered through the thick, dark glasses on her nose and smiled knowingly.  “Alex?”

She nodded.

The old hippie stuck out her hand.  “Vera Rosensweig.  I’ve heard a lot about you.”

They shook hands, and then Dr. Rosensweig parked herself in the peeling leather office chair across from her.  

“So,” Dr. Rosensweig began, “I imagine your sister explained to you my background.  So, I want you to understand that I’m someone you can talk to about everything.  No euphemisms, and no talking around what you do for a living, or the little family secrets.  I know ‘em.”

Alex nodded.

They sat looking at each other for a minute without talking.  Finally, Dr. Rosensweig asked, “So.  How are you making out in here so far?”

Alex shrugged.  “It’s kind of like prison, I guess, but a little more benign.  I can’t relate to most of these people… hardcore junkies, housewives with booze and pill problems because they need something to fill their lives.”

“Mm,” Rosensweig agreed.  “You don’t have that problem, though, do you.  Your life is very full, isn’t it?”

Alex sighed.  “Yeah, too full.”

Another long pause.  Then Rosensweig asked, “So, how long have you been drinking?”

So Alex recounted how she’d partied too much when she was younger, how she’d go on benders while she was involved with Astra before her death, and how she’d been drinking heavily ever since her death.  It had eased off since she’d been with Maggie, but then it spiked again when Astra returned.  

“So…” Rosensweig said after musing for a moment, “why are you so afraid to feel things?”

Alex took a breath to answer and then stopped short.  “I … what?”

“You’ve been using your drinking primarily as an anesthetic, it sounds like.  Burying your gay feelings, burying your desire for your sister’s aunt–”

“That’s not as weird as it sounds, by the way.”

“Nevertheless, burying your feelings for her, burying the shame you felt afterwards.  Burying the guilt you felt when you killed her.  Then finally, your skies clear for a minute, and you have this beautiful thing with this woman who helps you come out to yourself, and then your sister’s aunt drops back into your life and-”  She made a stirring gesture.  “-stirs up all that junk again.”

Alex nodded. 

“So, we all have to feel things, Alex.  We all grieve, we all have guilt, we feel ashamed, we feel lust, we feel these human things… and since we’re speaking frankly, it’s not just humans that feel these things, as I’m sure you’ve figured out.  But you’re alive, Alex.  You have to let yourself feel things.  Even the things you’re scared of.  Even the things that hurt. Everyone has to.”

Alex scoffed.  “Yeah?  Does Wonder Woman have to feel things?”

Rosensweig chuckled.  “Well, I treat her once in awhile, but to be honest with you, it’s more of a coffee klatch.  She doesn’t really need therapy.  But most people do.  And clearly, that includes your sister, and Astra.”

Alex’s mouth snapped shut.

“That’s going to be the real key, for you, I think,” she went on, tapping on the frame of her glasses.  “Learning to feel things, and let them wash over you, without thinking you’re going to be destroyed by them. You have  to bend to your feelings, and then they don't break you.  But don’t worry.  I know already from your sister how strong you are.  You’ve got this, Alex.”

And that was only their first session.  Alex was freaked out by her incisiveness.  But she was also relieved to have someone to talk to who wasn’t Kara, wasn’t J’onn, wasn’t a friend or family member with expectations of her who definitely didn’t want to know a damn thing about what Astra was like in bed.  

She talked about her reluctance to let Maggie or Astra out of her life.  Rosensweig seemed amused.  “So, you want to have your cake and eat it too?”

Alex shrugged.  “In an ideal world, maybe.  I don’t think that’s realistic, though.”

Rosensweig smiled.  “Well, it all really depends on how the cake feels about being had and eaten.”

Alex laughed.  “I don’t know, I think it would be a hard sell.”

Rosensweig nodded.  “Maybe.  And it’s not a solution I recommend to most people.  In your case, though … Alien cultures don’t always conform to what we expect.  The rules of romance aren’t so universal.”  She thought for a moment.  “Tell me something.  Do you feel like you share this spiritual thing that Astra feels with you?”

Alex hesitated.  “I… I don’t know.  It’s not my religion, you know?  But … I always felt pulled to her, even when I tried to fight it.  It’s not logical.”   She smiled.  “But then, I always felt that with Maggie, too.  It just… fit.”

Rosensweig smirked.  “Well.  We’ll talk more about what it would mean to try to negotiate something there, but what I want you to do between now and our next session is think about your feelings for these women.  Really think about them.  Dwell in them.  Be prepared to describe them to me.”

She thought of Maggie and how Maggie turned her on, made her laugh, made her feel steady and safe.  She thought of Astra and the way she commanded admiration, sparked excitement, aroused curiosity and desire.  She realized that they stirred different things in her, and that she felt incomplete without both.

_ Some nerve, _ Alex thought wryly to herself,  _ asking me to feel feelings.  _  But it worked.  She soldiered bravely through arts and crafts despite not having an artistic bone in her body.  She hacked her way through group therapy, and found that despite many surface differences, that she had more in common than she’d first thought with the bored housewives, who were really just numbing loneliness and the pain of no longer feeling desired.  That one of the really hardcore junkies struggled to live up to an extraordinary sibling, in his case, a famous diplomat who spoke seven languages and had been instrumental in authoring a trade agreement with Thailand.

“Don't run from the wreck!” Rosensweig exhorted her.  “Dive into it!”

So Alex did, and came to know the map of her own jagged edges, and where the monsters lurked.

She felt what she felt, some of it for the first time.  It was hard work, harder than anything she’d ever done, probably.  At times, she despaired.  But then she thought of Maggie.  And she thought of Astra.  And she thought of working hand in hand with them to shape the future, whatever it was going to be.  And she knew she’d make it.

_ You’ve got this, Alex.   _

_ _


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Today's mini-binge was brought to you by the letters A, L, and M, and by the number 3. :D

_ “You’re a detective, Sawyer.  Detect.” _

 

Maggie decided to start with J’onn at the DEO.  

“I need to talk to Space Mom,”  she said, striding into his office and parking herself across from him.

“Excuse me, Detective?”

“Kara’s computer mom simulation.  I need to talk to her.”

“That’s highly protected.  May I ask why?”

Maggie took a breath.  “I need to.  To help Alex.  I need to understand things about Krypton.”

“Alex isn’t from Krypton.”

“No, but Astra is.”

J’onn nodded slowly.  “I see.  Are you sure you want to venture into all this?”

“It’s not even a question,” Maggie replied firmly.  “I’m already in it.  And right now, I’m the girl at the gun fight who’s carrying a knife.  I don’t have all the information.”

J’onn reluctantly agreed, and after placing safeguards around certain information, he granted Maggie the access she sought.

It was strange talking to Space Mom.  She looked like Astra, but more formally dressed, without the rock and roll white streak in her hair, without the haunted look, without the smudges of dirt on her face like Astra had last time Maggie saw her.  She knew she wasn’t looking at Astra.  Even in her current state, Astra’s fierceness and grace was evident just from looking at her.  You could believe she knew how to handle a weapon and could picture her throwing a punch, even if she wasn’t doing that right now.  She couldn’t picture Space Mom even bitch-slapping someone.  

She asked questions about Astra.  She learned that Astra was a rebel even in her youth.  She learned that the white streak came from an electrical accident when Astra was thirteen.  She learned that Astra had been a poet when she was young, and that she had achieved maximum proficiency in seven different fighting styles before she was sixteen.  She learned that she wept at her sister’s wedding, and that she was the best marksman in her class at military academy.

She listened to epic poems about Kel-Lo and Rana, the brightness of their passion for each other and their legendary victories.  She heard in all of them the words that Astra had said to her last time they met:   _ The fire in me celebrates the one in you. _

She learned that Krypton had, long before its death, engineered sexual desire out of its people, as it no longer served a purpose, but that it still remained as a recessive trait in some genetic lines.  

She wondered whether that information mattered anymore.  She was discovering Astra for who she was.  It was tugging at her in ways she had not expected.

She was picking up lunch at a coffee shop when she saw on the television something suddenly jarring:  an oil rig on fire.  And then she watched a dazzling silhouette, a shimmering green and blue shape, plunge into the water.  The newscast was showing highlights of something that had happened yesterday while she was holed up talking to Space Mom.  The figure was credited with stopping the leak at the bottom of the sea.  The video then showed this fearsome, beautiful figure circling the rig, extinguishing fires with its freezing breath, occasionally plunging into the water like a flaming dolphin to burst forth a moment later in a plume of glittering spray.  

It nearly stopped her heart for how poetic and powerful it was.  It was brilliant.  It was defiant.  It was….

“Astra,” Maggie whispered.  In her chest was that stirring again, but stronger.  Seeing Astra in her essence, knowing what she now knew… “I see you.”  

She didn't remember paying for her sandwich.  She just wandered down the street, puzzling over what she’d just seen while she ate it.  It was Astra, of that she had no doubt.  But that suit, where could she have gotten that beautiful suit?

Then it occurred to her that she only knew one person who could make a suit like that.     
  
  


***************

 

“Uh, why… why do you think it's my work?”  Winn asked, squirming a little under Maggie’s fiery gaze.

“I don't know a lot of people it could be, Winn,” she retorted.  “It's you or Edna Mode.”

He gritted his teeth and then whispered, “Alright!  Fine!  Yes I made the suit!”

“Why didn't you tell anyone?”

“Because she told me not to, and I'm scared of her.”

Maggie cracked a wry smile.  “Okay, well, look.  I need to find her.”

Winn glanced around wildly.  “Okay, well… I … I did put a tracker in the suit.  Just, you know.  In case.”

“In case what?”

He shrugged.  “You never know.  In case say, you came in here demanding to find her without telling me why?”

Maggie sighed.  “Look, it's for Alex, okay?”  She wasn't sure that was completely true anymore, at least not exclusively.

He slid into his console and began tapping rapidly and pulling up various apps and then a map sprang into view.  It was the West Coast, stretching up into British Columbia.  A blinking blue marker sat in the upper part of the map. Maggie pointed at it.  “That's her?”

“Yeah.”

“Where is she?”

He tapped a few more seconds and then answered, “She's in the Cascades.  Mount Baker.”

She nodded and slapped him on the back.  “Thanks, Winn,” she muttered, already jogging toward the exit.

“Hey make sure you don't tell her it was me who told you where she was!”  he called after her.

  
  


*************

  
  


“Mount Baker?” Kara repeated.  

“Yeah.  I need you to call in a little favor with your Luthor friend and see if she has a plane she can loan me.”

Kara shook her head.  “Well, that's silly.  Why don't I just fly up there and-”

“It has to be me,” Maggie interrupted.  “You can understand why, right?”

Kara sighed.  “I'm exhausting all my favors this week.”

“Well, your sister needs you to call in one more.”

Two hours later she was in the passenger seat in the cockpit of a Cessna being piloted by none other than Lena Luthor herself; beautiful, stylish, and grinning like a Cheshire cat over what an absolute lark this whole thing was.  “You ever jumped out of a plane before?” she was shouting over the engine.

Maggie nodded.  “It's been a minute, but yeah, lots of times,” she hollered back.

They were zeroing in on Mount Baker, the highest peak in the Cascades of British Columbia.  As they dropped a little lower, she could see a tiny, sparkling blue-green dot like a jewel on the snow.  It was her.   _ Astra.  I see you. _  She checked her straps.  

“Thanks again for doing this,” she shouted, crouching and preparing to leap.

Lena laughed.  “Anything for love,” she replied with a sparkling grin. 

_ Anything for love. _

Maggie looked.  And then she leapt.  

She hurtled toward the ground for a few sickening moments, then deployed her chute.  It popped open, yanking her upwards and slowing her descent.  The frosty air bit through her gloves and hat and coat, but she was able to enjoy for a moment the slow grace of her descent as she dropped through the cold, swirling gusts of wind.  She’s been a Cali girl for too long; she wasn't properly outfitted for these temperatures. She landed in the snow, about a hundred yards from the sparkling shape that she knew was Astra.  She trudged through the powder, her eyes fixed on her destination.  It wasn’t far, but through the snow, it was work, and she pushed cloud after cloud of thick white breath into the air.

As she drew closer, she saw Astra, sitting in the snow, knees pulled up to her chest, looking meditative.  She turned her head to face Maggie, and the wind tugged at her hair and blew it around her face, whipping it around with clouds of errant snowflakes.  Her eyes blazed so blue against the snow, Maggie could hardly breathe.

Astra rose, and held out a hand.  Maggie grasped it, and it burned even in this cold, burned even through her glove.  “Astra,” she panted.  “The fire in me… celebrates the one in you.”


	18. Chapter 18

Astra had sat in the gleaming snow.  She had given her grief to the ebb and hush and flow of the world, and it was soothing her for a moment.  She tried not to think about the fact that she still missed them.  Women, indeed  _ people _ , like Maggie and Alex didn’t just fall out of the sky.

She had become aware of a small plane circling overhead, and a small shape jump out of the side of it.  After a moment, a red parachute blossomed open above it and slowed its descent.  As it descended, delicate as a flower on a breeze, she realized who it was.  It was Maggie.

And she had fallen out of the sky.

Now here Astra stood, gripping Maggie’s hands, able to feel her cold even through the gloves she wore.  “What are you doing here?”   _ The fire in me celebrates the one in you, does she even understand what she says? _

Maggie gripped back.  “You need to come back to National City with me.”

Astra shook her head.  “But why?”

“Alex needs you.”  Snow began to stick to Maggie’s hat and the little strands of dark hair that escaped it.  “She… she needs  _ us _ , Astra.”

Astra didn’t understand.  “But what about–?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Maggie declared, still out of breath.  “Nothing matters except that we’re in this situation together, and we have to fix it together.  You and I both tried running away, and it didn’t work.”  Her eyes pleaded silently for a moment.  

Astra nodded.  Maggie was shivering.  “I must take you home.”

Maggie nodded upwards to where Lena was circling overhead.  “Do you… mind if we ride in Lena’s plane?  Not that I don’t want to experience the magic of flying with you…”  Her eyes flashed with sardonic humor here.  “...but I’m feeling a little exposed to the elements?”

Astra smiled.  She embraced Maggie, and brought them both up into the air, where they boarded Lena’s plane at ten thousand feet.  The cockpit wasn’t really big enough to accommodate them, but they squeezed in, Maggie sitting on Astra’s lap.  She was still shivering.  Astra shifted and twisted about until she had liberated her shimmering green cape from underneath herself, and wrapped it around Maggie.  She smiled as she felt her shivering slow, and she felt Maggie relax against her, and her heart sang.  Her arms settled around Maggie’s waist.  Winn had not mentioned that you could use the cape to warm someone who was cold, she thought.  It was a far better use for it than anything he’d named.

  
  


*****************

  
  


Astra went home with Maggie.  She was sorry for the plane ride to end, because she had enjoyed being close to her in that way.  But she was pleased to be allowed into her home.  It was small, but it was warm and smelled of her, and she was radiant when she was relaxed and in her element.

So Maggie cooked dinner and caught her up on what had been going on.  Astra approved of Maggie’s choice to push Alex to seek the help she needed.  Even Kara had expressed worry about Alex’s drinking, and it seemed that whatever the future held, it would be better if she faced it without that weight hanging around all their necks.

Maggie’s dinner was a revelation.  It was different than other things she’d tasted on Earth.  It was a thick, dark stew that tasted like nothing she had tasted before.  “What are these?” she demanded.

“Black beans.”

“And this meat?”

“There are five different kinds, mostly different kinds of pork.”

“Wonderful.”  She ate quietly for a few moments, closing her eyes and savoring the clamor of flavors and textures that jostled for her attention.  “There is orange in this,” she declared after a moment.  She knew that flavor.  Kara kept full bowls of oranges around.

Maggie nodded, grinning.  Her smile was like the sun coming up.  “Yes.”

“Wonderful,”  Astra said again, as passionately as she had ever said anything in her life.  “What do you call this dish?”

“Feijoada,” she said.  “My mom was Brazilian.  She taught me how to cook a lot of that food.  This is one of my favorites.”

“I can understand why,”  Astra replied, nearly swooning as she shoveled more into her mouth.

After dinner, they sat on the living room couch.  Astra peppered Maggie with more questions about Alex’s treatment and when they would be able to see her.  Then she began asking Maggie about herself.  She confessed to knowing a great deal thanks to what she had found on the Internet, but they talked into the wee hours, and the next thing they knew, the sun was rising.

After a long, sleepy quiet, Astra reached over and placed her hand on Maggie’s.  “Maggie.”

Maggie turned her head and looked at her through drowsy, heavy eyes.  “Hm?”

“The words that you said to me,”  Astra ventured.  “When you first came upon me in the snow.  Do you understand them?  Do you know what they mean?”

Maggie smiled.  “I’ve listened to The Darkening Sea, Salt and Iron, and The Twin and Triple Hearts,”  she murmured, fighting to keep her eyes open as she named the Kel-Lo and Rana epic poems.  “So, yeah.  I know what they mean.”  Her fingers closed around Astra’s hand, and Astra felt her heart leap in response.  Maggie’s eyes dropped closed for a moment, and she whispered, “I see you, Astra.”

Maggie was beautiful in repose, fearsome in motion, and Astra felt herself longing to touch her as she had touched Alex.  “Do you imagine,” she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper, “that we might someday claim our rights with one another, just once?”

Maggie opened her eyes and her smile was sweet and lazy, like honey dripping.  “If we do that,” she replied softly, and her voice was soft as perfumed smoke, “it’s not going to be just once.”

Astra closed her eyes, and her blood sang in her veins.  She could feel and hear the elevation of Maggie’s pulse, still steady, still even, but louder, stronger, slightly faster.  

“Do you ...want that?”  Astra pursued.

Maggie looked at her, too tired to hide that she was enjoying looking at her.  She nodded.  “Yeah.  Very much.”  She rubbed her thumb over the back of Astra’s hand.  “But… We’re going to talk to Alex first.  No more going off and doing stuff by ourselves.”

Astra nodded her assent.  After a moment, she chuckled a little.

“What?” Maggie asked, squeezing her hand.

“You are so small,” Astra sighed, her heart feeling suddenly very light as she contemplated being with someone so petite.

Maggie, eyes closed again, snorted.  “I'm not that small.”

Astra smiled.  “Yes, you are.”

Maggie chuckled.  “Yeah, I am.”

Astra wrestled her desire into submission, and then they slept, Maggie in her bed, Astra on the couch.  It was better that way.

She counted the days until they could visit Alex again (the rules were very specific).  

When they arrived at Las Palmas, they three embraced and then Alex exclaimed happily, “You’re both here!”

Maggie shrugged.  “I detected.”

Astra added, “She jumped out of a plane.”

Maggie punched her shoulder and laughed, “Shut up.”

“But you did.”   


“It’s storytelling.  You just blew my wad for me, right up front.”

Astra understood little of that sentence but said nothing.

“We have missed you,” Astra said.

Maggie nodded.  “We have.”

“So,” Alex said, “what have you two scamps been up to?”

“After she went off in a super suit that Winn made her, and closed up an oil spill off the coast of Canada, I found her on top of Mount Baker.”

“That is when she jumped out of a plane,”  Astra supplied helpfully.

Alex had a quizzical look at this remark.

“I did.  Lena Luthor took me out in her Cessna to track her down and … yeah.  I jumped out of it.  With a parachute.”

Alex nodded, taking in the information without comment, but looking amused.

Maggie shrugged.  “You told me to detect, so I detected.  Anyway… We’ve been getting … closer since then,” Maggie said carefully.

Alex tilted her head curiously.  Her eyes now flicked down to where Maggie’s fingers lightly brushed the hem of Astra’s jacket.  “Closer how?”

Maggie smiled.  “Alex … I see her… I see her like you see her.”

Alex looked fascinated with this prospect.  “Do you, now.”

Astra nodded.  “It is as I said.  We have seen one another’s light.”

Alex nodded in response.  “Hm.  And… what does this mean, exactly?”

“It means,” Astra answered, “that we wish to claim our rights with one another.”

Alex peered at Maggie for a moment.  “But you’re not Kryptonian.  What rights do you have exactly?”

Maggie shook her head.  “Astra wants to claim her rights.  I’m just … I don’t know.  It’s like you said when you were trying to explain it before.  The minute I really opened up and saw her, just  _ her _ , not her as competition or a threat, there was this pull between us.”  

“It was there before that,” Astra remarked, “but you did not wish to see it.”

Maggie tossed her a sidelong glance.  “Anyway.  I don’t know if this is the solution to our … situation, but I think… it could be.  Nothing has happened, and nothing will, if you’re not comfortable with it.  We’re not making any more decisions without you.”

Alex looked back and forth between them, and Astra struggled to read her face.  Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Alex cracked a half-smile and decided, “Not till I come home.  And I get to watch.”

  
  


**

  
  


The next few weeks were maddening, strange and sweet.  Maggie played her the Rolling Stones (Astra particularly liked “Gimme Shelter”) and showed her Humphrey Bogart movies (“but why is there no color?”).  She showed Astra how to make pancakes but wouldn't give up her feijoada recipe.  

Maggie often entered her physical space.  She touched the small of her back or leaned over behind her when she was sitting on the couch, letting her warm breath caress Astra’s ear.  She was deliberately tormenting her with her closeness and Astra at one point became so aroused that she bared her teeth and growled, “You will pay for this.”  Maggie laughed and answered, “I hope so!”  

And Astra dwelt in warmth, and in hunger, taking joy in the delay of her own fulfillment.  When it came, she knew, it would be all the sweeter, for it would be shared with their Alexandra.


	19. INTERLUDE

Excerpt from the Kryptonian epic poem, The Darkening Sea:

 

> And Kel-Lo of Fire-Heart and Rana of the Silver-bright spear  
>  Stood before the water, the blood-dark Sea,  
>  And embraced  
>  And Kel-Lo said my beloved, I am with you  
>  Though it may be that we come to die  
>  And Rana said then I die beside you  
>  Your name on my lips  
>  And Rao will have blessed me enough for one lifetime
> 
> And with stone-black eyes that burned volcanic  
>  Beneath dark-slash quick-knife brows,  
>  They honored one another  
>  And they kissed tectonic kisses as though they might be  
>  Their very last
> 
> And Von-Al-Shenem’s three hundred thundered down  
>  The sands, the rocks, the break-bone rocks  
>  And Kel-Lo’s lightning hammer struck the soldiers  
>  Two by two they fell by the darkening sea  
>  And before Rana’s spear quick and bright  
>  Two by two the soldiers fell  
>  And none upon all of Krypton ever loved  
>  As Kel-Lo and Rana loved  
>  As two by two, three hundred fell  
>  Down by the darkening sea
> 
> Trapped between three hundred and the ocean  
>  The ice-cold, blood-dark, white-tipped ocean  
>  Rana of sleek and brutal grace  
>  And Kel-Lo of hurricane’s might  
>  Splintered three hundred shields at the water’s edge  
>  And Rana of the clear and terrible eye  
>  Shattered three hundred helms  
>  Slew the enemy until their arms ached and their bones cried out  
>  And they fought as one, and bled as one  
>  And they ached as one.  
>  He was she, and she was he, and they were bound,  
>  Made one in their fury beneath Rao’s light,  
>  Driven to fight for one another.
> 
> When the last man fell upon the sand, the blood-stained sand  
>  Kel-Lo and Rana laid themselves upon it  
>  Kissed each other’s battle-heated mouths  
>  Licked each other’s wounds,  
>  Made love among the ruins of war,  
>  They made love to the wrecks of each other’s bodies.  
>  The fire in me, said Kel-Lo, celebrates the one in you.  
>  And Kel-Lo’s eyes burned blue against the sky,  
>  The ink-black, thundercloud threatening sky,  
>  And the sea flung itself against the shore where Rana lay.  
>  The fire in me, said Rana, celebrates the one in you.  
>  And Rana’s skin gleamed bronze through the dirt and blood upon it,  
>  Gleamed bronze against the sand beside the sea,  
>  the ice-cold, blood-dark, white-tipped ocean  
>  For none on all of Krypton ever loved each other so.
> 
> And Kel-Lo said,  
>  Let us return to our hall, to our farm and home,  
>  Let us return to our people who await our victory,  
>  Let us drink and eat, and dance, and love,  
>  And bathe in rivers bright and clear, and  
>  I shall drink nectar from your hands my love,  
>  Water cool and sparkling I shall drink from your lips,  
>  Lay flowers upon your naked skin,  
>  And consume honey from the hollows of your sex,  
>  And all the world shall fade away  
>  As we devour one another  
>  And our fire turns each other into ash.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the first of the last three bits. They're short, but they need to be taken together, to give you a little view on each one's perception of the relationship as it moves forward. I hope you've all enjoyed this story. :)

Alex left Las Palmas with a thirty day chip and a new lifestyle choice that would include AA meetings on the regular.  She arranged to continue seeing Dr. Rosensweig, because frankly she had decades’ worth of alien related horse shit to work through, and Rosensweig was by far the best she'd ever find.

But tonight, she was going to Maggie’s, and she was going to watch Maggie and Astra make love for the first time.  She scolded herself for thinking of it as the first time; she had no right to assume that it would continue past tonight.  But she was both nervous and eager: she delighted at the prospect of seeing their two beautiful bodies entwined, but she feared her own jealousy might rear up.  She'd never done anything like this.  She hoped desperately that Maggie was right, that it would be the way forward for them.

They had discussed whether Alex should join them in bed, but Alex insisted that the first time should belong to the two of them.  She only wanted to be there.  

She kissed them both before they kissed each other, and murmured, “I love you both.”  They smiled at her, and then she sat back in Maggie's comfortable stuffed chair, and watched as they leaned into one another and kissed.  The air was electric and Alex’s eyes were wide, not wanting to miss a thing.  She smiled as serious, intense Astra was at first confused, then charmed by Maggie’s playfulness; she nipped at Astra’s chin and nose, teased her that she was too slow to bite back.  The wonder on Astra’s face seemed as if it had never occurred to her that sex could even be playful. Alex liked that look on Astra’s face; every time she'd been with her, it had been serious, intense.  That was like a drug in its own way, but Maggie’s teasing and her relaxed, easy ways stood in such beautiful, welcome contrast.

Astra was having fun.   _ Fun! _

They began undressing each other in an unhurried fashion, and Alex felt her heart speed up.  

“The fire in me,” Astra whispered, “celebrates the one in you.”

Maggie bit her lip.

Astra pulled Maggie’s soft, stretchy t-shirt over her head.  “Will you make your body mine tonight?”

Maggie tossed the shirt aside.  “Yes,” she answered.  “Will you make your body mine?”

“Yes,” Astra answered.  

Alex felt herself grow warm at that exchange.  She watched their hands explore each other's bare breasts while they continued  to kiss, slow and gentle, then harder, then back to gentle.  Alex leaned forward, and directed Astra's eye to a place on Maggie's neck, and told her, “She likes to be kissed here.”  Alex thrilled when Astra placed her mouth there and Maggie made a happy little sound.  

Alex mostly didn't interject as they stripped each others clothes completely off, only commenting occasionally to suggest that one of them kiss or touch the other a particular way, or to simply comment with a pleased sigh, “Hm, amazing.  So beautiful.”

She had not banked on the possibility that she would be able to look at them and enjoy their responses in a way that she couldn’t when she was making love to either of them.  She could focus solely on the way Maggie’s face looked when Astra sucked on Maggie’s nipples, and how Astra’s eyes fluttered closed when Maggie nibbled on Astra’s ear and whispered something Alex couldn’t quite hear but knew was unbearably sexy.  She sat back, marveling at the beauty of their naked bodies and at being able to view them in full, in a way she could not when pressed against either one of them.  

Maggie sitting atop Astra, the two of them moving against each other, made Alex’s heart pound.  She heard Maggie murmur something like, “See?  Size doesn't matter.”

Alex didn't know what the joke was but she saw Astra laugh softly and she felt a joyful shiver to hear her sound that happy.

And the sight of Astra on her back, spread open, lost in pleasure, with Maggie lying between her legs, kissing her the way Alex knew she was so very good at… Alex couldn’t help slipping a hand in her pants and lazily touching herself while she watched.  Astra opened her eyes, and saw her, and smiled.  Alex smiled back.  

_ Beautiful, _ she thought, watching the shivers of orgasm race through Astra’s powerful frame.  

_ Beautiful. _

  
  


*****************

  
  


Only after Astra and Maggie had satisfied each other a couple of times did Alex come into the bed between them.  “I missed you both,” she said as they set to the business of removing her clothes.

“We missed you too,” Maggie answered, tugging Alex’s jean’s down, “didn’t we, Astra?”

“Very much,” Astra replied, unbuttoning Alex’s flannel shirt and removing it.

Naked between them, she kissed one, then the other, and then asked them to kiss each other again because it still sent an ecstatic shock through her when they did.  She felt both of their hands roaming her body, felt herself rise up into their touches.  

“We wish to be yours,” Astra whispered to her.  “Both of us.  And we wish to belong to each other as well.  We wish to share among us three what was once only between two.  Is that acceptable to you?”

Alex smiled and kissed her.  “It’s more than I could have hoped.”  She turned to look at Maggie on the other side of her.  “Is that what you want?”

Maggie kissed her.  “Yes,” she said.  “The fire in me celebrates the one in you.”

Alex smiled.  “Then my body is yours.”  She looked at Astra.  “And yours.”  

Their affections were gentle, collaborative, as they looked to one another for how best to make their Alex happy.  Alex closed her eyes with bliss as they kissed her face and neck, as they each sucked and nibbled at a hard nipple, as their hands each wandered over her skin and reacquainted themselves with the sensitivities of her body.   _ We are so pleased that you are with us again, _ they told her as they moved along her body.   _ We’re so proud of what you’ve done and what you’re doing.  We love you, yes, we love you.   _ Maggie softly stroked her clit while Astra slid fingers inside her, fucked her gently, and Alex was drowning in the pleasure of feeling so much affection from the two people she needed so deeply.

And she came twice, and then twice more, under the combined attentions of their two mouths, their two pairs of hands, their two voices telling her that she was home now. 


	21. Chapter 21

Maggie found that making Alex come was easier with a second pair of hands in the bed.  Not to say it was ever difficult, but it was easier now.  They negotiated the space, she and Astra, and there were, from time to time, moments in which one of them wanted to approach her one way and the other was hoping for something different.  In those moments, they simply asked Alex what she would prefer, and she guided them.  

Maggie found that she and Alex worked well together when making love to Astra;  Alex followed Maggie’s lead easily when things were playful and light, and when the mood was hotter and more intense, Alex knew what she needed and Maggie could easily pick up on it.  They established that while Astra loved to have them go down on her, that she most enjoyed being fucked, and hard.  It tended to take two of them tagging out for that, because it took a lot of strength and endurance to give Astra what she wanted, the way she wanted it.

Maggie struggled at first with being on the receiving end of both of their attentions.  She didn’t fully understand why; she’d been in bed with two other women before, after all.  But it had been different.  The mechanics were very much beside the point for her.  She was finding that her own scars, conveniently ignored for years, were brought to light in the arms of her two lovers.  She had no choice but to overcome her fear of trusting and loving, because the delicate balance they struck required it.  She had to trust that Astra and Alex both loved her enough that they would never close her out, or it would all fall apart like a house of matchsticks.  She had to let go of her fear of being vulnerable, and let herself love them both.  She surprised herself the first time she lay between them and welled up in tears when they lavished kisses on her.

_ You are a miracle, _ Astra would whisper as she kissed her stomach.   _ We’re so lucky to be here with you, _ Alex would agree, kissing her mouth.  Not so, Maggie would protest, and Astra or Alex would kiss her and hush her.  Alex understood.   _ You deserve this.  We deserve each other, _ she promised her.  All three, in their ways, had been misfits, had scars and sorrows, had an aching need for love, that bound them as much or more as their love of the fight.  

She enjoyed watching Alex and Astra together, the way their seriousness and intensity set the bed on fire, how they struck each other like a match.  They sometimes played a little rougher with each other than Maggie liked for herself, but they clearly loved it, and Maggie enjoyed the sight of them, lightly glowing with sweat, roughly urging each other toward orgasm.  Often she couldn’t help muttering something to goad them on, make them go at each other harder, make them come faster.  She was a mildly invasive spectator but they didn’t seem to mind it.

And they made room, too, for them to each enjoy each other in pairs, alone:  Alex and Astra, Alex and Maggie, Maggie and Astra.  That was important, too.  On one such occasion, she lay in bed with Astra, kissing her, stroking her hair, fiddling obsessively with that white streak.  

“Are you really happy with this?” she asked, in slight disbelief that this was really working.

Astra smiled at her.  Maggie had come to love that smile, because when she first met Astra, she saw so little of it.  “What would I have to be unhappy about?”

“Not everyone can share this way,” Maggie answered frankly.  “I wasn’t sure I could.”

Astra thought about this for a moment.  “Not everyone shares what we share.”

Maggie smiled.  “The warrior spirit?”

Astra nodded, and Maggie saw that faint mischief that she’d come to recognize.  “Yes.  And also three unusually fine sets of tits.” she added, curling her warm hand around one of Maggie’s breasts.

Maggie burst out laughing.  Astra was learning things.  Too many things.  It was wonderful.

Alex went to her AA meetings and pressed on at work, and was lighter than Maggie had ever seen her.  Her burdens were ebbing away.  She rarely ever had nightmares, and when she did, and she woke, crying out for Astra, Astra was there to kiss her and tell her that she was alright.  Maggie was grateful to have that.  She was thrilled to see the Alex she loved, no longer staggering under a burden she could not bear and that Maggie couldn’t help her with.

One Sunday morning, she sat curled around Alex on the couch, watching baseball, while Astra made pancakes.  The smell mingled with the smell of coffee and filled the apartment they now shared.  “Do you really think this is working because of the  _ kothirim _ ?  Do you believe that that’s real?”  Maggie asked her.

Alex smiled.  “Well, I’m not sure it matters.”

Maggie nodded.  “I know what you mean.  When I was talking to Space Mom, and learning about Krypton, I could find all sorts of reasonable scientific explanations for the rarity of sexual desire among Kryptonians, and why they might need to spiritualize it, and thought about how it was reasonable that I could be having a psychosomatic response to the way Astra regarded it and on and on.  But what helped me make sense of what I felt wasn’t the science.  It was the poetry.  And I thought, so what if it’s not real?  It’s a way of looking at the feelings that makes sense.”

Alex nodded.  “It’s defining your feelings in that language instead of yours.”

“Exactly.”

They turned and looked into the kitchen and saw Astra, moving with lithe grace, preparing breakfast while scratchy old rock and roll wailed in the background, from time to time absently singing a line she recognized.  

Alex said, “You and I, we always fit, didn’t we.”

“Yeah, Al.  We did.”

Alex settled back, burrowing against Maggie’s chest.  “And she fits us, too.  How are we this lucky?”

Maggie kissed Alex’s shoulder.  “Haven’t you been listening?  Warrior soul.”

“Right,” Alex sighed happily.   


Maggie nibbled Alex’s neck.  “So…”  One of her hands crept up Alex’s shirt.  “...would you make your body mine, maybe after breakfast?”

Alex chuckled.  “Like you have to ask.”


	22. Chapter 22

Astra’s heart was full.  More full than she had ever guessed that it would be.  She loved waking beside her two warrior spirits, kissing them both, cooking breakfast for them.  She loved the way their bodies fit each other in bed, the way they navigated the space between them and staked their claims to one another.  She loved receiving their affections, and also basking in their love for one another.  These human hearts were so full of courage and passion.  She had bonded to both of them.  She would give her life for them if it came to that.

She joined the DEO’s payroll part-time as Starfall, and when it was agreed that they didn’t like having Alex and Astra together all the time while Maggie was elsewhere, Maggie joined the DEO as well.  They were referred to as the Musketeers, both beloved and a little bit feared.  Few things equaled the joy of heading into combat with the two of them beside her.  How they blazed, how bright their fires were in the heat of a fight!  They fought beside one another, lived together, and shared one very large bed.  Astra spent what remained of her time helping Greenpeace with blockades, gardening, researching, and participating in acts of political rebellion and pressure to affect environmental change.

Astra had always been an aberration, even before her death.  She was an unplanned twin, joined in a passionless bond to another genetic aberration from a lesser house.  Permitted to bond but not to reproduce, and Non had never desired that anyway.  No matter whether she rebelled against the order and her place in it, or fought to uphold it, she was ever an outsider.  However brilliant her gifts or noble her heart, she was ever on the wrong side of every equation.  And now, here she was, blessed with abundance, with balance .  The love of two hearts, the sense of belonging she had never dared hope that she’d have.  The three of them rose early and went running together and then Astra would cook and then they’d go to work.  They’d spar in the evenings or sometimes go to game nights with Kara and her friends, who were a bit surprised at first by what they shared, but adjusted to it easily enough.  

They occasionally went to the cinema and held hands in the dark, which Astra enjoyed enormously despite needing an entire large popcorn for herself.  They sometimes argued over who got the middle seat, but never for very long.  Maggie could usually be bribed with Sno-Caps and Alex could usually be bribed with getting to be in the middle later on that night.

She loved watching her two companions make love.  She loved learning their peculiar human ways and discovering human music and art and storytelling; all the things about humanity that she had failed to take in before she died.  She learned that she loved rock and roll, abstract art (the mathematics of a Jackson Pollock painting left her intellectually aroused), the historical fiction of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and the story that Alex and Kara were so fond of on the television, about a place called Westeros, where ice monsters were coming but for some reason everyone was fighting over a chair.  And she loved learning to cook, breakfast in particular.  After she mastered waffles, pancakes and crepes, Maggie taught her the subtle artistry of omelets. 

Alex was hopeless with the cooking but excelled at the barbecue, and Astra found something primitive stirring in herself when Alex came in from the grill, smelling of fire.  Only the promise of freshly grilled meat kept her from tearing Alex’s clothes off right then and there, and not even always.  

Alex also had a gift for unstopping sinks, hooking up entertainment systems, replacing blown fuses and the like.  It amazed Astra each day the infinite little ways in which the three of them complemented one another.  She and Alex could talk science all day long, which mildly bored Maggie, but Maggie was forever showing Astra old movies that they enjoyed discussing while Alex was cleaning or, as she’d begun doing since she got sober, meditating.  Some mornings, though, Astra liked to join her for meditation in the cool, pale light on the deck.  

She loved her days with them.  She loved their strength, their humor, their softness, their hardness, their passion, their scars, their differentness.  

And she loved what it did to them both when she would whisper in their ears, “I am going to take you to bed, and I am going to fuck you.” How they would melt for her when she said this!  She learned many words and phrases from them that had such an effect, but they especially liked that one.  Especially when she followed it by picking them up and carrying them off.

Nothing would convince her that this was anything but the work of the divine, because no-one, no-one was given a gift this great.  It was recompense for years of not-belonging.

“It is strange to say,”  she observed one night after the three of them had made love, “but I think, my beloveds, that this is the best of all possible worlds.  And, Alexandra, I had to die in order for us to get here.”  She kissed Alex’s shoulder.  “I had to be changed in order to be capable of this.  I had to go away, for you to become who you became, for you to meet Maggie.  For all of this to be possible.”

Alex smiled.  “It is strange, isn’t it.”

“Good strange,” Maggie sighed.

Astra curled around Alex, reached an arm over her waist to lay a hand on Maggie’s hip.  

She fell asleep, listening to the beating of their three hearts, music in the night.


	23. Post Script

So, I have written a number of pieces about these three in sort of an "extended universe" of this fic.  I've gathered them into a series, "More Beautiful for Having Been Broken," which you can enjoy and subscribe to so that you can get notices as I add new items.  I explore the coming together of the three as a couple, how their individual faith (and lack thereof) informs their lives and how their love and respect for one another grows a thing of unparalleled beauty.  

 

http://archiveofourown.org/series/714435


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